We are using the Mindfusion WPF Diagramming Component. I require a Visualbrush which must be able to be used in a third-party component for diagramming.
We have horizontally-stretching lanes on the diagramming canvas. We must define a background color for this lane, and some text on the top-left corner, to be repeated on the x-axis. The text must remain the same size while the rest of the lane is filled with color when the lane is re-sized.
Unfortunately, the only thing we can do is provide a Visualbrush to the diagramming component, which is then set as background for the lane. It seems impossible to work with this restriction because I am unable to define a text with fixed size, repeating on the x-axis, while also having a color brush stretching, all within a single Visualbrush. How can this be done?
Related
In WPF InkCanvas, ink is rendered on top and strokes don't have z-index property. I have other UIElements like shape, images on InkCanvas and can't bring UIElements to top. Is there any work around for this problem. I have tried
below things.
1) use two different InkCanvas (one for strokes & one for UIElements)
- Can't achieve sandwich effect in this (i.e. UIElement between strokes
Something like this in this circle is UIElement
2) Masking strokes using geometry path and add as UIElement
- If I add strokes as UIElements (using path) then I will loose erase functionality.
The map editor which is part of our game suite uses ink to draw terrain so I have recent experience of this sort of thing.
The way my app works is you select a thing you're drawing ( woods, road, contour etc ) and draw a stroke using ink.
I then process that stroke and obtain a geometry.
I pass that to a viewmodel > itemssource > itemscontrol.
This is then templated into a piece of terrain.
This itemscontrol is below the inkcanvas.
The user can manipulate the z-index of those by moving them up and down in the observablecollection.
I rely on just the order to define z-index.
I also retain the data from each stroke by serialising it.
You're thinking "how about erase?".
To do that I'd have an explicit erase-this-thing mode.
Let them pick a shape and get it's stroke data, add the stroke back to the inkcanvas. Once they finish erasing then use a "save changes" button or something to re-process the stroke(s) and switch back to edit mode.
Since this is a game map editor I'm working on, drawing produces area and line types of terrain but their area/line is defined by a geometry translated from a stroke. ZIndex corresponds to the order of objects in the left panel. The buttons you can see with the chevrons pointing up and down move the order of a
Let's suppose we have the designed the layout of some WPF application to be used on standard Full HD screen 1920x1080. Then we need to rotate the screen and install it in a box that is mounted on kiosk PC but in Portrait orientation.
I need to find a way on how to rotate the screen easily or at least in some more elegant way.
I tried to use use RenderTransform and RotateTransform applied to the contents of the window but this rotates the image and of course not the layout.
The controls remain of the same width and height.
Is there a way to do it automatically or should I take each control and change it properties one by one ?
The problem is present for TextBlocks and TextBoxes. They are intended to be used horizontally. You can rotate it but the layout is calculated based to it's horizontal width.
BTW. Rotation of the entire window is not allowed. It throws an exception.
It looks like that I have found the solution myself. If we choose the Layout transform instead of RenderTransform then the visual system does the arrangement and measurement of the layout automatically before the rendering.
The WPF framework does the job in this order
LayoutTransform
Measure
Arrange
RenderTransform
Render
This is best described here LAYOUTTRANSFORM VS. RENDERTRANSFORM - WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
I am new to silver light and would like to understand a bit more from the pros. Let me tell you what I am trying to do. I am into photography and my goal is to create a web site that allows users to view their images and be able to rotate, zoom, crop, special effect etc. I have developed the web site that allows users to order pictures but now I want to start working on the actual picture/image manipulation. So for testing i put a canvas and a rectangle( with an image). Placed a slider and was able to link the slider to the rectangle. As i increase the slider the image gets larger. But I was kind of hoping as the image gets larger it does not surpass the boundries of the canvas. I assumed that is what it means by being a child of a canvas. Am i mistaken? If so how do you suggest me doing this? Remember I am very new to this and may be going about this very wrong.
Thanks!
Your are right. In Silverlight (like in WPF, WinForms etc.) gui-elements form a hierarchy of elements wherein controls can act either as parents or as children.
The reason why your rectangle surpasses the boundaries of it's container lies in the way controls are getting aligned. This depends on what kind of container you want to place your child into.
In a canvas for example you position the children with absolute measurements (left, top, height, width). In a self-organizing container like the StackPanel you choose an horizontal alignment (Left, HCenter, HStretch, Right) or a vertical alignment (Top, VCenter, VStretch, Bottom) which determines the childs behavior when you place it inside the parent. Furthermore you can specify the dimension of the child (Width, Height) and an optional margin which determines the gap between the Top, Right, Bottom and Left bound of your child to its enclosing parent.
But what ever container you choose it's inherent to it that you can let its children surpass its boundaries e.g. with a margin that is negative or greater than the container boundaries or simply by an child that is bigger in dimension that its container as you described the situation with your rectangle.
In your case I would consider working with the idea of clipping. Clipping simply means to
(1) define an geometrical area (in Silverlight and WPF it is a Path object) which lies over some graphical context (some section of your ui or your control etc).
(2) what lies inside the boundaries of this clipping area remains visible and everything else remains invisible.
So you can think of a clipping area as a window onto your screen which you use to look through.
When you are using Microsoft Blend this is easy to realize:
(1) Just use a geometrical shape like a Rectangle, a Circle or a custom Path.
(2) Place it somewhere upon your UI
(3) Right-click the shape, select "Path" and then "Make clipping Path"
(4) and voulà, you've just defined a clipping area which you can modify as you are used to modify controls.
Hope this gave you an idea how to deal with your problem.
cheers.
The System.Drawing.Graphics class has a property CompositionMode with two options: SourceOver (which, based on the alpha component, blends whatever is drawn with the background already existing) or SourceCopy which simply overwrites the background with whatever is being drawn.
Does something similar exist in WPF?
In WPF when i draw a PolyLine for example on top of another the new PolyLine always alphablends with the background. I think that is independent of the container being used. I am using a Canvas but could not find a blend mode property anywhere. What I want to do is what the SourceCopy compositionmode mentioned above does. I.e. the new PolyLine should simply overwrite whatever is already on the Canvas.
Is there a simple way to do that, short of using pixel shaders (which - as far as I understand - wouldn't work anyways because I don't have access to the Canvas backbuffer).
I am not stuck with a Canvas and would be happy to use any container that supports overwrite mode.
I currently have a solution based on a WriteableBitmap for which I obtain a System.Drawing.Graphics context and then manipulate the CompositionMode. It works but since my window is fullscreen that solution has serious performance impacts.
Clarification and example:
The WPF window is fully transparent and so is the Canvas (back ground color(0,0,0,0)). Now I draw a PolyLine with a Color.FromArgb(128,128,0,0). I now have a semi-transparent red polyline. Next I draw the same PolyLine with Color.FromArgb(0,0,0,0). The result is the same as before because of the alpha blending taking place. What I want, however, is that the red polyline is erased with the second polyline (which is exactly what the SourceCopy mode in the Graphics class does.
I think all you need to do is make sure that the brushes used to fill/stroke the PolyLine have fully opaque alpha values (i.e. 255). Then the background shouldn't be blended into it.
You could apply a Clipping Mask, this way you can provide the path to clip over the elements that are below it, but it might be tough to maintain after a lot elements are required to be clipped...
I have a requirement to morph from an image (png) to a shape (polygon) in Silverlight 3 as an effect, but of course there is no built in transition or method to do this.
At the moment the best I have is fade one out and the other in, but can anyone suggest a decent alternative that may work or look better?
Regards
Moo
In Blend:
Create a rectangle. Set stroke to No Brush and Fill to Tile Brush.
For the ImageBrush of the Tile Brush, select your image.
In the object browser, select the rectangle, right click > Path > Convert to Path.
Use the pen tool to add some points to the path.
Add a storyboard.
Add a keyframe at 1 second. Blend will go into record mode
Use the direct selection tool to move the points into the polygon shape you want. Test out your animation.
At this point, the image morphs into a shape, but the image is still there. If you need to remove the image as well as morph it:
In your storyboard, at the keyframe at 1 second, change the opacity to 0.
Create a copy of the rectangle, but make sure fill is set to No Brush and Stroke is set to a color and width. Set the opacity to 0.
Add points, and mimic the animation you just set up for the image's rectangle.
Add a keyframe at 1 second for this element. In record mode, change the opacity to 100%.
The end result will be both paths morphing, the one with the image fading out while the one with no fill fading in.
I'm not a silverlight programmer, and don't know the details of what you want to do, so this is just a shot in the dark, but... if the shape you want the image to morph to is always going to have the same initial visual appearance (or some limited set of appearances) you might try morphing from the original image to an image of that shape, and then swapping the image that's the morph target for the geometry once you're done the morph. Course whether that would work or not is very dependent on the details of what you're doing. Sorry if you've already considered that and ruled it out.
You could possibly morph the image brush to the path of the shape by using an appropriate projection matrix. Or render a shape using the image brush and then morph that shape to the target shape, i.e. go from a rectangle to the target shape but using the image brush as the shape background. You may need to still warp the image brush somehow though.
An example of rendering a warped image is here in Charles Petzold's blog.