Frequently Asked Questions
What document types are supported?
Document Toolkit supports XPS documents. Experimental PDF support is available as well, but not production ready yet. Various scenarios exist to convert document to XPS. Learn more at How To Convert Documents To Xps.
What is XPS?
The XML Paper Specification (XPS) provides users and developers with a robust, open and trustworthy format for electronic paper. The XML Paper Specification describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, read by software, and read by people. XPS documents print better, can be shared easier, are more secure and can be archived with confidence.
See also XML Paper Specification Overview.
How does Document Toolkit work?
Document Toolkit implements a document processor capable of reading and converting XPS XAML to valid Silverlight XAML. Text rendering is based on Glyphs elements.
Based on industry-standard design patterns Document Toolkit provides an extensible architecture that allows documents to be loaded from virtually any source.
Why pay for Document Toolkit while there are open source alternatives?
A number of XPS document viewer solutions are available on the internet. Most of them are derived works from the excellent proof-of-concept XPS reader created by David Anson. Initial research on XPS readers for Silverlight by First Floor Software was also based on this proof-of-concept.
The biggest obstacle in implementing an XPS reader for Silverlight is the handling of fonts. Glyphs elements in Silverlight 2 (and 3) require that a font is available as resource in an assembly. The free XPS readers available today either solve this problem by manually placing font resources in an assembly (as is done for instance with the XPS viewer solution by Simon Guest) or by creating font assemblies on the fly using MSBuild on the server. Both solutions lack a 100% client-only solution that works automatically. And that is exactly what Document Toolkit provides, a 100% client-only solution for viewing any XPS document. Apart from a solution for fonts, Document Toolkit offers a whole lot more. Among others:
- Asynchronous IO for all load operations. All document data is loaded on background threads, the UI is never blocked.
- Support for partial loading of XPS documents. No need to load an entire document to be able to view a page. Document Toolkit loads and renders pages efficiently regardless the size of an XPS document.
- Automatic disposal of pages that are no longer needed.
- Document Toolkit implements a variety of transformation techniques in order to render pages correctly.
- Document Toolkit has been tested on hundreds of XPS documents. Document Toolkit is not 100% XPS compliant (due to a number of limitations in the current Silverlight framework), but it gets very close.
Why are the hyperlinks in my document not working?
The XPS format supports both internal and external hyperlinks. Your XPS document probably has no hyperlink targets defined. Some XPS producers, such as Microsoft XPS Writer, remove all hyperlink target information. Workaround: use another XPS producer to create an XPS document that does contain hyperlink information. The Office 2007 Save as XPS plugin does preserve hyperlinks in XPS documents.
What are the system requirements to use Document Toolkit?
Document Toolkit requires Silverlight 4. Customization of UI controls is supported in Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend.
My document does not render properly
Please contact First Floor Software and if possible include the document in your message.
I have another question
Please contact First Floor Software.
