The major improvement in this release is made in the licensing code for commercial versions of the products.

The update contains also some minor improvements in the Ab2d.ReaderSvg and Ab2d.ReaderWmf libraries and a small improvement in ViewerSvg. But let me first tell you about the changes in the commercial licensing code.

Recently a customer reported very long delays (up to 10s) when creating an instance of ZoomPanel class. After some investigation I have discovered that the delay is related to a "bug" in Microsoft's RSACryptoServiceProvider class (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948080). The RSACryptoServiceProvider is used to validate the license and under some circumstances the VerifyData method on the class can cause a long delay. The licensing code has been changed to prevent the delay. The problem with this bug is that the licensing code can work very well on computers where you test your products, but on some client's computer the RSACryptoServiceProvider can cause your application or product to start with a long delay.

Therefore it is highly recommended to update the products to the latest version.

But this was not the only improvement in the licensing code. Now it is possible to set the new EmbeddedLicenseAssembly property to make the check of the embedded license even faster. To understand the purpose of the new property let me first shortly describe how the licensing code works.

The licensing code in our components uses the standard .Net licensing system. This means that at compile time the compiler calls the licensing code in our products. There the developer license key is read. It is converted into a runtime license key and saved by the compiler into assemblies embedded resource. When our component is used in your application, its licensing code first tries to find the embedded runtime license key. Because our component does not know which assembly contains the embedded license key, it is usually needed to check resources in multiple assemblies before the correct one is found. To make this check much faster, it is now possible to set the static EmbeddedLicenseAssembly property to the assembly that contains the embedded license. This way the licensing code can immediately find the license key and can therefore execute much faster.

The following example sets the EmbeddedLicenseAssembly for the ZoomPanel control:

public class MyClass()
{
    public MyClass()
    {
        Ab2d.Licensing.ZoomPanel.LicenseHelper.EmbeddedLicenseAssembly
          = typeof(MyClass).Assembly;

        InitializeComponent();
    }
}

Samples for other products and some additional details about this process can be found in the new "Using commercial version" help file.

The improved licensing code is currently available for Ab2d.ReaderSvg, Ab2d.ReaderWmf and ZoomPanel. The fix for Ab3d.Reader3ds and Ab3d.PowerToys will be available in the following days (both libraries will have many new features that have to be finished before publishing).

As mentioned before, this update also brings some additional improvements to Ab2d.ReaderSvg and Ab2d.ReaderWmf.

ReaderSvg and ViewerSvg:

• Added NameFormatString property to BaseXamlWriterSettings - it can be used to customize how the object names are written to xaml (custom prefixes and suffixes can be added to names). The export window in the ViewerSvg have two new TextBoxes that can be used to specify custom prefix and suffix that will be used to format the object names.
• Improved reading svg image elements with added support for preserveAspectRatio property.

ReaderWmf:

• Improved drawing Paths - in some cases only path stroke should be drawn without using any fill.
• Added support for monochrome brushes.

I am happy to announce that all our 2D products have been updated.

The following screenshow is showing improved design time support for SvgViewbox and WmfViewbox:

The following are the changed in Ab2d.ReadSvg:

• Improved design time support for SvgDrawing control - now the svg file is shown in design time (before the image in design time was shown only in SvgViewbox).
• Added SvgFileLoading and SvgFileLoaded events to SvgViewbox and SvgDrawing controls.
• Prevented locking referenced image files.

The following are the changed in Ab2d.ReadWmf:

• Added support for pattern brushes. Reading pattern brushes is turned on by default but can de disabled with setting ReadPatternBrushes to false.
• Improved design time support for WmfViewbox and WmfDrawing controls - now the metafile is shown in design time.
• Added MetafileLoading and MetafileLoaded events to WmfViewbox and WmfDrawing controls.
• Fixed reading some embedded images that have their width or height negative.

Added support for pattern brushes need some additional comments because there are some differences between handling pattern brushes in GDI+ and WPF. Pattern brushes in GDI+ are not affected by the scale of the shown image. This means that if you zoom in or out of the metafile that is drawn by GDI+, the pattern brush is not scaled and is always drawn in a way that one pixel in the pattern bitmap is always rendered with one pixel.

In WPF the bitmap brushes are affected by the scale.

For example if you have a rectangle with 10 x 10 size and pattern brush from 10 x 10 bitmap and you scale the rectangle to be shown on the whole screen, the bitmap will be also scaled to the whole screen. In GDI+ the bitmap is not scaled so the pattern is still the same as when showing the rectangle without scale.

Because of this difference the imported pattern brushes can sometimes look strange. Therefore it is possible to disable reading pattern brushes with setting ReadPatternBrushes to false.

ZoomPanel has received the following updates:

• Fixed problems with using None for Stretch value.
• Improved using ViewboxLimits.

All the products also had a licensing issue that showed unlicensed dialog under some circumstances. This issue is now fixed.

As usual the new version can be downloaded from User Account page (for commercial users) or from my Downloads page (for evaluation version).

I am happy to announce that the new version of Ab2d.ReaderSvg library is available.

The version adds improved support for svg use and embedded svg elements. Those two svg elements are now correctly placed and have the correct size.

The new version also provides two new properties that can be used to fix problems that are caused by the differences between WPF and svg.

The first new property is SwitchElementProcessingType. It specifies which children of the svg switch element will be imported and shown. The switch element in svg file defines children that are shown based on the conditions defined in switch element. Because it is not possible to process svg conditions in WPF, it is possible to choose how the children will be imported and which children will be shown. The possible values for SwitchElementProcessingType are:

• Disabled - svg switch element will not be imported.
• ShowFirstDiscardOthers - only the first switch child will be imported. Other children will not be imported.
• ShowFirstHideOthers - all switch children will be imported. Only the first element will be shown. Other children will have their Visibility set to Hidden.
• ShowFirstCollapseOthers (default) - all switch children will be imported. Only the first element will be shown. Other children will have their Visibility set to Collapsed.
• ShowAll - all switch children will be imported and shown.

The second new property is OverrideMiterLimit. The property has been added because WPF renders miter limit line cab differently as they are defined in svg specifications. The miter lime cabs show sharp line edges. But when the two lines meet at low angle, the sharp edge could extend very far away from the line junction. Therefore the miter limit can limit the sharp edges. In WPF the miter limit is used to specify how far away the sharp edge is allowed to go. In svg, the miter limit defined at which angle the miter limit is converted into beveled edge. This difference can lead to some anomalies when importing svg files. In this case the OverrideMiterLimit can be used to override the miter limit specified in the svg file and use value 1 or 2 instead.

For more information about the differences please see forum thread about this.

For backwards compatibility by default the miter limit defined in svg file is used (OverrideMiterLimit = 0).

Both new properties can be also set in the new ViewerSvg (here the default OverrideMiterLimit is set to 2 - miter limit of 2 is used by default).

This release brings many improvements to almost all our products.

The metafile reader (Ab2d.ReaderWmf) library got most of the changes. The svg reader (Ab2d.ReaderSvg) also got a few new features. There were also some improvements that affected all the products except ZoomPanel. ZoomPanel control was left out of this release because the library is waiting for a major upgrade. Now when this release is out I will finally start working on it (many things are already prepared - like mini map, rotate the content, zoom slider, etc. - they just need to be polished and tested).

Let me first describe the changes that affected all the products (except ZoomPanel):

• The licensing dialogs are now created in WPF and not in Windows Forms as before (this skips loading Windows Forms and other related assemblies and therefore speeds up the application start - especially in evaluation version).
• Improved commercial license code that tries to find embedded resources - this code is now much faster.
• Added splash screens to all of the converter applications.

Besides the changes above the Ab3d.Reader3ds and Ab3d.PowerToys libraries did not get any new features.

But as mentioned before the Ab2d.ReaderWmf library was improved quite significantly. The code that transformed positions data from metafile into WPF was rewritten from ground up. The new version now enables to specify in which units the read positions will be - they can be in Pixels, Millimeters, Inches or GdiCompatable units. This can be useful when the drawing for example in Microsoft Visio is created in millimeters, the WPF elements that are created with pasting the drawing into Paste2Xaml can be also defined in millimeters. When the default Pixel units are used, the size of the read metafile is now the same as the size that is shown when the metafile is opened by Windows.

This is the list of changes in Ab2d.ReaderWmf library:

• Added MetafileUnits property. It specifies the units in which the metafile is read. By default its value is set to Pixel. It can be also set to Millimeter, Inch or GdiCompatable. This can be useful to preserve the positions and other properties when the drawing is created in millimeter or inch units.
• Added AutoSize property - defines if size of the root canvas is get from metafiles bounds or its frame. When bounds is used, the root canvas size is just as big as its containing objects.
• Added GetSize(units) method that can be used to get the size of the read metafile in the specified units.
• The size of the read metafile is now by default (if MetafileUnits is Pixel) the same as the size shown when metafile is opened by Window.
• Improved reading metafiles that use MM_LOMETRIC, MM_HIMETRIC, MM_LOENGLISH, MM_HIENGLISH or MM_TWIPS mapping mode.
• When reading polyline from a metafile and it has only 2 points a Line is used instead of a Polyline.
• Added UsedMinLineWidthFactor to get the used minimal line width.
• Improved Ab2d.Utility.ReaderWmf.ResourceDictionaryWriter - now the process of creating ResourceDictionary from metafiles can be better customized by creating a derived class.
• Removed obsolete Ab2d.WmfViewbox control - the control has been obsolete for a few versions - Ab2d.Controls.WmfViewbox should be used instead. This also removes the need for Designer assemblies to remove the obsolete control from Designer ToolBox.

The Paste2Xaml application that can be used to simply copy objects from drawing application and paste them into XAML was also improved - support for the new features of the Ab2d.ReaderWmd library was added.

Some of the changes were also made in Ab2d.ReaderSvg library:

• Markers (arrows and other line endings) are now correctly show on line and polyline elements (before they worked only on path elements).
• markerWidth and markerHeight attributes are now correctly handled.
• Removed obsolete Ab2d.SvgViewbox control - the control has been obsolete for a few versions - Ab2d.Controls.SvgViewbox should be used instead. This also removes the need for Designer assemblies to remove the obsolete control from Designer ToolBox.

Now I have to put together the new version of ZoomPanel.

Than a new exciting area awaits - Silverlght 5 with its 3D.

The best svg reader for WPF and svg to xaml converter for WPF and Silverlight is now even better.

This release focuses mostly on making work with Ab2d.ReaderSvg easier. Now it is possible to get progress report when reading svg files (there are also two interesting samples about this). It is now easier to use GetXaml method when the read svg file has embedded images. Also the ResourceDictionaryWriter class (helper class to create ResourceDictionaries from svg files) is now greatly improved. With new protected fields and protected virtual methods it is now very customizable.

The reading engine also has some improvements. It fixes some of the special issues that were reported by error reporting in ViewerSvg. The number or error reports is now very low and this tells that the reading engine is already very good and can handle really most of svg files.

The problems with showing the exported xaml in Visual Studio 2010 designer for Silverlight are now gone. With the new version the GetXaml method sets Width and Height to Path element when it is called to create xaml for Silverlight. This is a workaround for a bug in Visual Studio - please vote for the bug on Microsoft Connect so it will be fixed as soon as possible.

The samples have also been updated. There are now a few more samples and they are now available for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010.

The following is a list of all changes in Ab2d.ReaderSvg:

• Added ProgressChanged event to ReaderSvg to get report progress when reading file.
• Improved GetXaml method for Silverlight: Added workaround for displaying Paths in Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010 designer - set Width and Height to Path element.
• Improved GetXaml method - now the images are written to xaml without need to specify ResolveImagePath delegate. The uri format can be specified with the new DefaultImageUriFormatString property in XamlWritterSettings.
• Improved reading linked images (not embedded into svg file). Before an exception was thrown when the image file could not be located - now the image object is created but its Source is not set.
• Fixed reading some svg files with embedded image that reported "Invalid length for a Base-64 char array." error (used custom base64 reader instead of .Net method to read the string).
• Fixed problems with reading svg files from Microsoft Visio that have more than one layer with the same name defined.
• Improved ResourceDictionaryWriter class to make it much more customizable. The AddFile and AddStream methods now work correctly. The usedSvgReader, geometrySettings and xamlWritterSettings fields are now protected so they can be changed in derived class. Also the methods CreateReaderSvg, CreateXamlWriterSettings, ReadSvgFile, ReadSvgStream, GetXaml, GetRootResourceKey and ResolveResourceKeyCallback are now protected and virtual so they can be overriden in derived class.
• Added AddHiddenElements property that specifies if hidden elements are read. If the value of AddHiddenElements is true, than hidden elements are read and have their Visibility property set to Hidden or Collapsed (depends on using display or visibility attribute in svg file).

As always the ViewerSvg application has also been improved.

As with Paste2Xaml the ViewerSvg can now also change the size of read elements to any custom size. This is not done with only adding a ScaleTransform to the root element (as in previous versions) but now the positions, sizes and other values are changed to fit into the new size.

The improvements in Ab2d.ReaderSvg are also reflected in ViewerSvg. There is now an option to read or skip reading hidden elements. The export dialog also has some new settings - see the following is a screenshot:

As usual the new version can be downloaded from User Account page (for commercial users) or from my Downloads page (for evaluation version).

The biggest improvement of the new version of ReaderSvg is improved performance.

To prepare the new version a lot of time was spent in a profiler. I used some very complex files from some common applications that can save drawings into svg file.

It was quickly clear that the most of the CPU cycles were spend to solve svg's style inheritance. A lot of the time was also used to resolve many possibilities to define styles in svg file (svg styles, css, attributes, ect.).

For example if we have a complex hierarchy, the root group element can define stroke thickness for the path element that is 10 children away. The process of getting the correct style declarations was before not optimal and is now much faster.

The SVG Specification allows some very complex stlye declararions that are very rarely used. The code that tries to support all the possibilities is much quite complex and takes significant time to execute. I have analyzed the svg files I have (really a lot of them - lots of them from users feedback) and found out that almost all of them are using only simple style declarations. So I have decided that by default only simple style declarations would be processed. But if needed the complex style processing can be used by setting the new OptimizeStyleProcessing property on ReaderSvg to false.

For example the following style declaration is by default not processed correctly (but magically it is read correctly with setting OptimizeStyleProcessing to false):

<defs>
   <style type="text/css"><![CDATA[
            .mummy circle, .mummy rect, .mummy polygon { fill: green}
            .mummy > .thischild { fill: red }
            .primus + .secundus { fill: red }
            .mummy circle:first-child { fill: red}
         ]]></style>
</defs>

Improved performance is not the only improvement. There is more:

• Added support for text and tspan baseline-shift.

• Now polyline and polygon are read as WPF's Polyline and Polygon elements (in previous version they were read as Path).

• Fixed measuring size - improved for bigger stroke thickness on some shapes (when AutoSize property on ReaderSvg is true - by default).

• Fixed SvgViewbox and SvgDrawing controls - they do not throw exceptions when Source is not set but some other property like AutoSize is set.

As usual the existing customers can download the new version from their User Account page. Others can download a 60-days trial version from my Downloads page.

We are all very excited about the new Visual Studio 2010.

Among other great new features there is also a new visual designer for Silverlight projects. But the new designer still has some problems. One of them was reported by "ttiggemann" on my forum and is related to xaml created from svg file with ViewerSvg.

The problem is that RenderTransfrom that is written as attribute is not well formed for the designer.

For example the following line is reported as incorrect:

<Canvas RenderTransfrom="1.5 0 0 1.5 100 50">

Such xaml is compiled successfully and also runs correctly shown in the Silverlight application.

The workaround for the designer is to change the attribute into element:

<Canvas>
    <Canvas.RenderTransfrom>
        <MatrixTransform>1.5 0 0 1.5 100 50</MatrixTransform>
    </Canvas.RenderTransfrom>
</Canvas>

The same problems occur in Expression Blend.

To support this case the Ab2d.ReaderSvg library and the ViewerSvg applications have been changed.

In Ab2d.ReaderSvg library there are now additional properties in BaseXamlWriterSettings that can be passed to GetXaml method. The WriteTransformationsAsElement can be set to true to write RenderTransfroms as elements instead of attributes. This property is by default set to false for xaml for WPF and to true for Silverlight xaml.

The xaml is now furher optimized by converting the transformation that only translate the objects into Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top properties.

For example the following:

<Path RenderTransfrom="1 0 0 1 100 50" ...

is now by default changed into:

<Path Canvas.Left="100" Canvas.Top="50" ...

This behavior is controlled by new UseCanvasPositionForTranslateTransform property on BaseXamlWriterSettings class.

The new properties are also reflected in ViewerSvg. This is the screenshot of the new export dialog (new options are marked with red):

Besides new settings for displaying transformations, there are also two additional new settings.

Now it is possible to control if the default xaml namespace is added to the xaml (useful when exporting as Canvas, Viewbox, etc.)

Also by default the number of displayed decimals is now unlimited - because in most cases the xaml is compiled so the number of decimals in xaml does not affect the size of the final product.

Unfortunately the RenderTransform is not the only problem. The xaml with changed transformations is still not shown in the Visual Studio 2010 designer.

The reason for this is a bug in VS. It does not show Path elements that are children of a Canvas.

For example the following xaml is not shown in the designer:

<Canvas Width="400" Height="300">
    <Path Fill="Red" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="2" Data="M10,10 L300,10 300,100 10,100z"/>
    <Path Stroke="Blue" StrokeThickness="2">
        <Path.Data>
            <LineGeometry StartPoint="10 10" EndPoint="100 100"/>
        </Path.Data>
    </Path>
</Canvas>

I have already submitted the problem to Microsoft Connect and it is already confirmed as a bug. Hopefully there will be a fix for it available soon. Please vote for the bug here and help programmers to decide what to fix first.

But the good news is that the new xaml export options fix the problems with the visual designer in Expression Blend.

Besides changes in generated xaml there are also two other improvement in the new ReaderSvg:

• Added support for some svg files that define url references with "&quot;" - for example: style="stroke: url(&quot;#linearGradient4603&quot;)".
• Added support for lengthAdjust attribute in text and tspan elements.

As usual the new version can be downloaded from User Account page (for commercial users) or from my Downloads page (for evaluation version).

I am happy to announce that a new major update for Ab2d.ReaderSvg library has been released.

ViewerSvg, a svg to xaml converter for WPF and Silverlight, has also been improved.

The new version 4.0 brings many new features and improvements. The most important new features are support for svg marker element (adds support for arrows and other line start and end markers) and svg symbol element (adds support for embedded fonts and other symbols).

But I am the most excited about the additional support for svg files created in Microsoft Visio. One step for improved Visio support was the implementation of marker elements (for connection line arrows). Another change was that now the names of read objects can be get from svg id attribute (as in most svg files) or from svg title element (used by Visio). This means that the names of the objects that were defined in Microsoft Visio are preserved when the svg file is read.

But I did not stop there. I have also added support for layers defined in Visio and for reading custom properties and attached data.

Some time ago I have found a demonstration on how to connect data to Visio diagram. I was amazed with how easy is to do this and how good the results look like. The demonstration can be seen here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/HA100518191033.aspx

The demonstration ends with the statement: "the possibilities are endless".

Now imagine that it is also possible to get the Visio diagram with embedded data and animate it, add mouse events to the diagram elements and make other modification of the diagram in a WPF or a Silverlight application.

This is very easy to do with ViewerSvg or Ab2d.ReaderSvg library.

With ViwerSvg it is possible to convert diagrams from svg file to xaml file. It also possible to export the embedded data into xml serialized DataTable. It is easy to use the xaml and the xml (DataTable) to create WPF or Silverlight applications.

With using Ab2d.ReaderSvg in WPF application it is possible to open the svg file directly in the application. The embedded data and the data about layers can be accessed from the application (note that layers data cannot be exported from ViewerSvg and therefore cannot be used in Silverlight applications).

The new version of ReaderSvg comes with new samples that demonstrate various uses of diagram data and layers. The following screenshots show one scenario:

Creating Network diagram in Microsoft Visio:

Network diagram opened in ViewerSvg with previewing the embedded data:

Network diagram svg file opened in WPF application with Ab2d.ReaderSvg:

To see more screenshots and complete list of features check out the new ViewerSvg and the Ab2d.ReaderSvg pages.

Here is a full list of changes in Ab2d.ReaderSvg v4.0:

• Added support for "marker" svg element - add support for arrows and other line start and end markers
• Added support for "symbol" svg element - this also adds support for embedded fonts inside svg file
• Added support for "clipPath" - object clipping
• Added support for "use" element
• Added support for xml:space="preserve" attribute - preserves the space before and after the text
• Added support for textLength attribute in text and tspan elements
• Fixed reading Rect data written with ',' instead of ' ' (for example '0,0,1,1' works now)
• The Name property on the read objects is now set (so it is not needed to use NamedObjects dictionary or GetObjectName method). Setting Name can be turned off wuth SetNameProperty no ReaderSvg.
• Improved the algorithm to correct the names read from svg file (now the name is not changed to lower case any more and also all letters are allowed and not only letters from 'a' to 'z').
• Added FallbackBrush property to SilverlightXamlWriterSettings so it is possible to control which brush is used instead of VisualBrush that is not supported in Silverlight
• Added GetLayerNames and GetElementsForLayerName methods to read layer information from svg file defined in Microsoft Visio
• Added support to read embedded data from svg file created in Microsoft Visio - added the following methods: GetCustomProperties, GetObjectsWithCustomProperties, GetCustomPropertiesDataTable
• Added NamedObjectsSource property to ReaderSvg to specify the source of the object names - for example for Microsoft Visio or other application that do not allow to set the svg's id attribute, the NamedObjectsSource can be set to NamedObjectsSourceType.Title or NamedObjectsSourceType.TitleIfExist.
• Added NamedObjectsSource property to SvgViewbox and SvgDrawing

The following is a list of changes in ViewerSvg application:

• Added support for showing custom properties defined in svg file
• Improved selection of objects
• Added Export image button - export selected element into bitmap image
• Added batch convertion of svg files to XAML for Silverlight

The 60-day evaluation version can be downloaded from my Downloads page. (If you already have an evaluation version, please uninstall it before installing the new version)

The existing customers can get the new version from their Users Account page (note that the commercial version is now different from the evaluation version available from my Downloads page)

The biggest improvement of the new Ab2d.ReaderSvg is added support for svg patterns. This feature has been requested by many users because svg patterns are commonly used by svg file created with Microsoft Visio. Another big improvement is support for complex strokes and pens - now also LinearGradientBrush, RadialGradientBrush, VisualBrush are supported.

Here is the whole list of changes:

• Added support for all types of svg patterns:
  before only TexturePatterns were supported, now other types of patterns are supported as well. All patterns are now converted into VisualBrush.
  NOTE: Silverlight does not support VisualBrush - Red brush is used instead.
• Added support for complex Strokes and Pens - before Strokes and Pens can be only SolidColorBrush. Now also other types of Brushes are supported (LinearGradientBrush, RadialGradientBrush, VisualBrush, etc.).
• Fixed using opacity on some svg elements.
• Improved support for RadialGradient when gradientTransform was used.
• Fixed getting the size of the root svg element when only width or only height is specified (when AutoSize is false).
• Fixed using Ab2d.ReaderSvg inside WinForms applications.
• Fixed licensing problems when used on 64-bit OS.

The new version can be downloaded from my Downloads page.
After downloading just install the new version over the previous version (no need to uninstall).

I am really excited to announce that the long awaited new version of ReaderSvg has been released.

The new version 3.0 is full of great new features and improvements. The most important is the support for Drawing objects (objects that derive from Geometry class - DrawingGeometry, StreamGeometry, etc.)

Previous versions of Ab2d.ReaderSvg returned the read svg files as Shapes (Path, Polyline, Ellipse, etc.). This was great when you needed to manipulate separate objects or add some mouse events to objects. The flexibility of Shapes has its cost when complex objects are shown - the performance could be very poor and memory consumption very high. WPF provides a much more efficient way to show more complex images - by using Drawing objects instead of Shapes.

With the new Ab2d.ReaderSvg it is possible to read the objects as Shapes (with the Read method) or as Drawings (with the new ReadGeometry method). And what is more, it is also possible to further optimize the drawing by using resources for similar Pens and Brushes and by combining geometries together (with passing the GeometrySettings to ReadGeometry method).

To make the usage of read svg objects simpler, there is also a ResourceDictionaryWriter sample applications that can produce complex ResourceDictionaries from svg files with just a few mouse clicks. The following screenshot shows SVG ResourceDictionaryWriter application with three svg files added to the ResourceDictionary (xaml of ResourceDictionary can be seen on the right):

The support for Drawing objects is just one of the improvements of the new version. Another very big improvement is much better performance of ReaderSvg - now reading svg files is almost as fast as parsing xaml with XamlReader.

Here is the full list of changes:

• Added Drawing objects support:
  new ReadGeometry method with support for advanced geometry optimization and use of resources (Burshes and Pens are defined in resources).
  new ResourceDictionaryWriter class and sample SampleResourceDictionary aplication to simplify creating resources from the svg files
• Added SvgDrawing control to show svg file as geometries in xaml
• Greatly improved performance on svg files where path elements have a lot of segments.
• Added GetXaml method to get the xaml of the read objects (also used in ViewerSvg; it is much more accurate as System.Windows.Markup.XamlWriter.Save)
• Added GetObjectName method - gets the name of the object. If object does not have a name defined returns null
• Optimized the output xaml for Path element - now the properties with default values are no longer displayed. This in most cases removes the following properties: StrokeStartLineCap, StrokeEndLineCap, StrokeDashCap, StrokeLineJoin, StrokeMiterLimit, StrokeDashOffset
• Added support for gradientTransform on radialGradient
• Added support for known colors in xaml writter - known colors like Black, Yellow can now be written with its name instead of hex display (#FF000000). This feature is used by default but can be disabled with setting UseColorNames in XamlWriterSettings to false.
• Fixed propagating text styles to child tspan elements (for example if text has underline decoration set, underline will be used also on the child tspan elements - if not overwritten by different text-decoraton)
• The path is now automatically closed when the last segment ends on the same position as the start segment. Before if the paths were not manually closed, there could be some sharp edges on some parts of the path.
• Improved setting the size of returned Viewbox.
  If AutoSize is false the returned Viewbox has the size that is defined in the svg file. The previous version did not set the size correctly.
  If the svg width and height are specified in cm, mm or inches the output size in xaml is set in cm.
• Added AutoSize property to SvgViewbox and SvgDrawing
• Added support for bitmap patterns - used as background textures
• Added BitmapImages property that contains all the bitmaps read with ReaderSvg (also contains images embedded into the svg file)
• Added ReadPathAsPathGeometry property - If false (default) the path is read as StreamGeometry (better performance). If true the path is read as PathGeometry (worse performance but path can be modified).

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Because of so many changes, it is possible that some of the applications that are using Ab2d.ReaderSvg need to be changed. Please consider the following two issues:

NamedObject dictionarty is changed from Dictionary<string, FrameworkElement> to Dictionary<string, object>. This change was added so the NamedObject property can be also used when svg file was read as Geometry. ReadGeometry method returns objects that are not derived from FrameworkElement. So the type change was needed. It would be also possible to define a new dictionary, but this would only postpone the change - in the future all the readers would implement the same interface and there will be room for only one named objects dictionary. This change could mean that the code that is using the NamedObject must be changed. If only the Read method is used (and not ReadGeometry), than the following code can be used:
FrameworkElement element = myReaderSvg.NamedObject["myObject"] as FrameworkElement;

Another change is that by default all paths are now read as StreamGeometry (before they were read as PathGeometry). This greatly improves the performance of reading svg file and drawing objects in WPF. But if your code expects the PathGeometry, the default behavior would throw a runtime exception. To avoid this, you can change your code to support StreamGeometry or set the new ReadPathAsPathGeometry property on ReaderSvg to true.

The ViewerSvg application has also been updated to support the new features of ReaderSvg. The following screenshot shows the new export dialog (notice the new geometries and new export images options):

The new version can be downloaded from my Downloads page.
After downloading just install the new version over the previous version (no need to uninstall).