The blog of dlaa.me

Proof-of-concept Silverlight XPS reader gets some Beta 1 love [SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer updated for Silverlight 2 Beta 1!]

After a few customer requests to update my SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer proof-of-concept XPS reader for Silverlight 2 Beta 1, I finally found time to do so. :) I've just updated the original SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer demonstration page and also updated the original source code download - so you can try it out in your own browser and/or download the code to see how it works!

SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer Application

Click on the image above to play around with the application in your browser. More details about what it is doing and how it works are available in the original SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer post.

Notes:

  • This was a fairly straightforward port from the original 1.1 Alpha implementation to 2 Beta 1. I have not changed the manual Canvas-based layout to automatic layout via Grid/StackPanel/etc. - but I'd definitely take that approach if I were writing it from scratch today!
  • The XAML didn't change at all - and most of the necessary code changes are detailed in the Breaking Changes in Silverlight 2 document on MSDN.
  • Because of the file:// URL restrictions introduced a while ago as part of the 1.1 Refresh, the sample code includes a separate web site. I explain more in the second half of my post outlining changes for the 1.1 Refresh.
  • One notable improvement is that I was able to #define SETSOURCE (see the discussion in the original post) and therefore the images are all being accessed from the XPS document itself instead of needing to be pulled out as separate files! I removed the associated #if/#endif blocks because they are no longer relevant.
  • I still didn't see any way around the Glyphs.FontUri issue (discussed in the same section of the original post), so the fonts remain separate like before.
  • Silverlight occasionally renders the "pageGraphic" Rectangle incorrectly. The obvious consequence of this is that the white page background disappears if it extends outside the Silverlight control's edges (e.g., you've zoomed in or panned). It's possible to verify that you're in this situation because the black page border is also not drawn properly. I've found that a simple refresh of the web page typically corrects the problem.