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I hope you did not notice that the actual version of Reader3ds has expired today. If you did, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience.

So finally the new version 4.3 is available for download.
This is the last freely available version and will expire on 31th December 2008.

The following is the list of changes:

The commercial version is already prepared. The version 4.3 is almost the same as the commercial version – the only difference is that it does not contain licensing system (it has the nasty expiration date).

The commercial version should be available at the end of the week. I need to move the site to a new and faster server and then it will be possible to purchase the license (automatically on the new site).

Another great news is that new versions of Ab2d.ReaderSvg and Ab2d.ReaderWmf are also almost prepared and will be published very soon. And until the end of the month commercial versions of both will be available also.

The tutorials can be found at www.wpf-graphics.com/HowToMenu.aspx.

Ups, a bug smuggled into the Paste2Xaml.

If you pasted metafile from clipboard, the object tree view was not filled. This is fixed now.

To make it even more user friendly, I have also added support for renaming the element by simply double clicking on it (on the image). Also the image is now fully seen when opened / pasted - before lower left part was partialy hidden with the application buttons. Those two changed were made to Paste2Xaml and ViewerSvg.

So if you were so quick to get the new version of Ab2d tools and libraries on 31th March or 1st April, than please get the new version again.

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

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.

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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.wpf-graphics.com/Overview2d.aspx.

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 the read image (top right on the image below).

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

• 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 the line thickness.
• Added EmbeddedBitmapImages property that replaced the obsolete MetafileImages (because of misunderstanding the property)
• Added support for reading pixels from metafiles - they are converted to Ellipse elements with the specified radius.

New version is available from www.wpf-graphics.com/Overview2d.aspx.

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.wpf-graphics.com/Overview2d.aspx.

• Fixed reading text for svg files created in Inkscape.
• Added SvgBounds property (bounds of the elements in svg). Set InnerWidth and InnerHeight as obsolete.
• Improved read svg elements so they fit correctly into parent object. For example with previous version some svg files produced Viewboxes that exceeded (or were smaller) the size of parent StackPanel. Now the Viewbox should fit correctly into StackPanel or any other element.
• Now FillRule for Path is set to NonZero or EvenOdd.
• Fixed some bugs that crashed the ReaderSvg.

New version is available with ViewerSvg from www.wpf-graphics.com/ViewerSvg.aspx.

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:

Paset2Xaml Screenshots:

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 - 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.

See www.wpf-graphics.com/Paste2Xaml.aspx for more.

ReaderSvg has now improved text support. In previous version all text were converted to paths. This made simpel svg files with text very complex in WPF. In new version text that do not have some special stroke or fill is converted into simple TextBlock. There is also a new property UseSimpleText that can forec conveting text into TextBlock even if text has some special storke or fill. The svg reading is also imporved.

ViewerSvg has also been slights improved.

See www.wpf-graphics.com/Overview2d.aspx for more.

ViewerSvg is a svg to xaml converter application. It is using the Ab2d.ReaderSvg library that imports objects from svg file into WPF.