Silverlight? Yes, the new Paste2Xaml and ViewerSvg support Silverlight!

by abenedik 31. March 2008 00:30

A while ago I spoke with Matevz Gacnik (his great blog: www.request-response.com/blog). He just came from MIX08 and told me that Silverlight is hot. Very hot! "You should implement support for it as soon as possible!" he said.

He is Microsoft's MVP. That means his advice should be taken seriously. So I postponed my current work - preparing a commercial version of Reader3ds.

Now I am proud to announce that new version of Paste2Xaml and ViewerSvg support Silverlight.

The following screenshots shows the new ViewerSvg with opened svg file and Export dialog:
ViewerSvg application
ViewerSvg export options

Now it is possible to use almost any 2D or 3D drawing application to create user interface elements for Silverlight applications. You can draw it in Adobe® Illustrator®, CorelDRAW®, Inkscape, Microsoft Visio or other vector drawing application, save the work in svg file and use ViewerSvg to convert the drawing into xaml. If the application support save into Windows metafile (wmf or emf) like Autocad, it is possible to use Paste2Xaml to convert the saved metafile into xaml. If it is not possible to save the drawing into svg or metafile you can use copy and paste the drawing into Paste2Xaml. This can be used for example for converting graphs from Excel or WordArt from Microsoft Work into xaml. Also there are already huge internet image libraries that can be a great source for user interface elements (see Links section).

So you can use your favorite drawing application and simply draw the user interface of your WPF or Silverlight application in it.

There are also some other improvements and bug fixes:

New in Paste2Xaml library v1.3:

  • Added support for silverlight.
  • Added objects tree view with rename option - possible to export elements with name (so they can be manipulated later from the code).
  • Added select object with mouse.


New in ViewerSvg library v1.3:

  • Added support for silverlight.
  • Added object selection with mouse.
  • Added export dialog with xaml text and preview tabs.
  • Added selecting number of decimals in the exported xaml (useful for optimizing the size of exported xaml).
  • Added possibility to export only selected elements.


New in ReaderSvg library v1.6:

  • Fixed reading number in exponent format (for example 1.234e-3) in transform element. This fixed the problems when some elements in the read image were placed on the wrong location and with the wrong size.


New in ReaderWmf library v1.3:

  • Fixed problems with some wmf files that were imported with some anomalies (lost details)

New version of all the Ab2d tools and libraries is available from www.ab4d.com/Overview2d.aspx.

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ReaderSvg | ReaderWmf

New versions of Ab2d tools and libraries

by abenedik 5. March 2008 00:20

Based on users feedback all the Ab2d tools and libraries were improved.

Paste2Xaml (utility to read Windows metafiles (wmf), Enhanced Metafiles (emf) or get matafile objects from clipboard and can convert it into xaml) and ViewerSvg (utility to convert svg and svgz files into xaml) has been improved with a zoom toolbox that enable panning and zooming (top right on the image below).

ViewerSvg application
New in Ab2d.ReaderSvg library v1.5:

  • Added support for reading svgz (compresses svg) files.
  • Fixed reading some embedded images - sometimes "Invalid character in a Base-64 string." exception was thrown.


New in Ab2d.ReaderWmf library v1.2:

  • Fixed reading some wmf files - especially files exported from Autocad are converted properly now.
  • Added MinLineWidthFactor property - useful for metafiles with lots of lines. With the property it is possible to adjust thickness of the lines.
  • Added EmbeddedBitmapImages property that replaced the obsolete MetafileImages (because of misunderstanding of the property)
  • Added support for reading pixels (individual points) from metafiles - they are converted to Ellipse elements with the specified radius.

New version is available from www.ab4d.com/Overview2d.aspx.

Thank you to all who have provided feedback on the Ab2d tools and libraries.
If you would also like to have some additional functionality or did find a file that does not work correctly, you are most welcome to inform me about it on my feedback page.
There is also a discussions group where you can post a question or see already answered ones.

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ReaderSvg | ReaderWmf

Reading SVG images, Windows metafiles (wmf) and Enhanced Metafiles (emf) from XAML

by abenedik 4. January 2008 00:20

With new version of ReaderSvg and ReaderWmf it is now possible to read SVG, Windows metafiles (wmf) and Enhanced Metafiles (emf) from XAML.

For example:
<ab2d:SvgViewbox Source="samples/myClipart.svg"/>

SvgViewbox can be used just as Image control. Its Source property is set to the Uri of the svg file. It can be a resource, content, located on the web or on the local hard disk. It can be also used for DataBinging - for example from Combobox. For reading metafiles there is a WmfViewbox control.

There are also some other improvements and bugfixes.

New version is available from www.ab4d.com/Overview2d.aspx.

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ReaderSvg | ReaderWmf

Added Paste2Xaml application and Ab2d.ReaderWmf class library

by abenedik 23. August 2007 16:20

Paste2Xaml is a WPF application that can read Windows metafiles (wmf), Enhanced Metafiles (emf) or get matafile objects from clipboard and can convert it into xaml. It can also export embedded images that can be used in exported xaml. The metafiles can also be imported at runtime with new Ab2d.ReaderWmf library.

The following diagram shows how it is possible to import 2D vector drawing from almost any drawing application into WPF world:

Ab2d Overview diagram

Paset2Xaml Screenshots:

Main Paste2Xaml window

Main Paste2Xaml window - a graph from Microsoft Excel 2003 has been pasted to the application (the application is already showing a WPF representation of the graph)

Export Dialog

Export Dialog - showing the xaml text and all the export options for a metafile with 2 embedded images.

The graph from Microsoft Excel 2003 shown in XamlPad

The graph from Microsoft Excel 2003 shown in XamlPad.

See www.ab4d.com/Paste2Xaml.aspx for more.

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ReaderWmf