Major update for Ab2d.ReaderWmf published

I am proud to announce that a major update for Ab2d.ReaderWmf library was released.

Ab2d.ReaderWmf library can read Windows metafiles (wmf), Enhanced Metafiles (emf) or get metafile content from clipboard and convert the read objects into WPF elements or export the read objects into XAML for WPF or Silverlight.

The library went through thorough refactoring and is now much faster (this is especially useful with big metafiles that are exported from AutoCad). It can also read metafiles much more accurately.

Existing users that tried to convert Microsoft Office 2007 elements into XAML were probably not satisfied with the quality of the bitmap images that were part of the exported elements. This is now fixed because the new version of Ab2d.ReaderWmf can read the high quality images that are embedded into EMF+ records that are used with Office 2007.

The following two images show the difference:

There are also some other improvements and fixes. Here is the fill list of changes:

• Greatly improved performance when reading metafiles.
• Greatly improved reading and pasting objects from Microsoft Office 2007 - images are now read from EMF+ part of the matafile and are much better quality than images stored in EMF part of the metafile.
• Added support for Pie and Chord elements.
• Added support for stretched text (condensed, widened).
• Fixed licensing issues on 64 bit Windows.
• Fixed importing text rotated by 180 degrees.
• Added ReadGeometry methods without geometry settings parameters that use default NoOptimization geometry settings (simplified use of ReadGeometry).
• Improved support for clipping.
• Changed calculation of MinLineWidthFactor (see help for more info).
• Imporved GetXaml - now know colors are by default displayed by their name (Black, Red, etc.). This can be turned off by setting UseColorNames property on XamlWriterSettings.
• Separate evaluation and commercial version.

Paste2Xaml application was also improved.

Now it has support for batch exporting metafiles into XAML for Silverlight (before only export for WPF was available).

The following two screenshots show Paste2Xaml in action (the first showing Excel Graph that was pasted into the application and the other drawing created in AutoCad and exported to metafile):

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Existing customers of Ab2d.ReaderWmf and Paste2Xaml should get the new version from their User Account page (login credentials were provided in the email that was send to you after purchasing the product).

Other users who are still evaluating the product or would like to try it, can get the evaluation version from my Downloads page.