Expression Blend 4 and Curved Text - silverlight

I'm looking to create text follow a curved arch. How can I go about this using Expression Blend 4?

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WPF blurry vector icons

I'm not able to get crisp icons in a WPF project. I've tried several solutions but the results are terrible when the icons are downscaled. The starting files are .ai (Illustrator) that I've exported to xaml code using Expression Design
Here is an example
blurry icons example
First of all, you can try to play with properties SnapsToDevicePixels and UseLayoutRounding.
Next, please check what coordinates your vector images use. In order to get the sharp lines, you must either move your coordinate system to (0.5, 0.5) or use half-integer coordinates (e.g. 0.5, 2.5, 11.5).
Please, have a look at this MSDN topic.
There is also a perfect article on this topic. It's in Russian, but you can try to use Google Translate for it.

Glossy shiny square button in WPF - XAML

I am trying to find rectangle buttons with gloss effect.
all examples are relevant for round buttons. (and when editing the code, the gloss effect is not suit the rectangle.
Do anyone know about xaml examples for button like in the images below?
It is possible to do this with XAML. There is a great XAML resource page for such things called xamalot.com. I have taken one button as a reference: http://xamalot.com/asset/0fc669c8-35f8-49c0-bceb-0d07f1d63691 :
The whole thing to draw with XAML is not that easy, but there are tools out there which allow you to draw and export like Microsoft's Expression Design.
The best way to accomplish this is with an image as content for the button.
<Button BorderThickness="0">
<Image Source="http://i.stack.imgur.com/XAgzU.jpg"/>
</Button>
You can use shading to get the effect in the second image or reflection to get the effect in the first image
You can create these kind of graphics with Illustrator easily, and Expression Blend has a feature to convert Illustrator vector files to XAML.
This option is the best in terms of quality, of course, since your graphics.
As an alternative, Expression Blend can do this too, maybe even faster.
I did do this type of thing once and I just drew the basic shape with a color, then drew another shape there, changed the scale + converted the shape to a path in Blend so I could move the points, then just applied a white color with lower alpha, and that's it.
I didn't provide much details in this answer so for any further information just leave me a comment.
Important tip: put your XAML graphics in a Viewbox!

Microsoft Blend - drawing polygons

I recently downloaded trial version of Microsoft Expression Blend and I can't figure out how I can draw polygons. I only found predefined shapes like pentagon,octagon, triangles but I can't find a tool to draw polygon
Use the Pen tool. See http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc188984.aspx for a video tutorial.
In Expresion Blend 4:
Place a any RegularPolygon shape such as a triangle, pentagon, or Hexagon on your canvas.
Go to the Properties Panel and expand the Appearance section.
Change the point count to the number of sides you want. 8 for Octagon, etc.

Bullets and Numbering in Silverlight

I'm looking for some comprehensive library for Silverlight on bullets/numbering. I've found a few, like Vector Light's RTB control, but most are lacking extended features of bullets/numbering that word processing programs have, like having the First Line Indent of a great value than the Hanging Indent (e.g. first line indent is 1 inch and hanging indent is .5 inch). Another example is customizing the size of the bullet/number Anyone know of good libaries for this for Silverlight?
Check out the ordered/unordered list controls explained in this link. You can extend its functionality to acheive what you intend to do. I have used it to show hierarchical data using nested lists and found it fairly easy to modify it to my needs.
that implementation works for read-only content only.
What if you need to apply bullets/numbering/indent to selected-text in a RichTextBox?
You have to programmatically find Paragraph elements inside selected-text and insert the corresponding character (bullet or number of tab) at the start of each Paragraph element.
Check out here for detailed explanation: http://www.codeding.com/?article=22

Simulate a handwritten signature in Silverlight: (e.g. A pen progressively draws the lines)

I'd like to have Silverlight draw the blue "L" and "C" in the image below, preferably in a way that the thickness of the line is maintained and speeds/up slows/down at the correct locations to simulate a handwritten signature.
(source: lamontconsulting.com)
Can anyone point me to the right way to do this? Thanks!
The first this is to take this raster graphic and turn it vector. There are different ways to do that, but I find Adobe Illustrator to be the best. It's got a feature called LiveTrace that will do this for you (PDF file). After you've got that, you could import that into Expression Blend and turn it into XAML (a PathGeometry). Once in Blend, you can animate any which way you like. What you'd want for this is a key frame animation.

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