This Wrox Blox teaches you how to add graphics to C# 2008 applications, explaining fundamental graphics techniques such as: drawing shapes with different colors and line styles; filling areas with colors, gradients, and patterns; drawing text that is properly aligned, sized, and clipped exactly where you want it; manipulating images and saving results in bitmap, JPEG, and other types of files. Also covered are instructions for how to greatly increase your graphics capabilities using transformations. Transformations allow you to move, stretch, or rotate graphics. They also let you work in coordinate systems that make sense for your application. You will also learn how to use all of these techniques in printouts. The author describes the sequence of events that produce a printout and shows how to generate and preview printouts. 

The final sections describe two powerful new graphic tools that were introduced with .NET Framework 3.0: WPF graphics and FlowDocuments. WPF applications can use XAML graphic commands to declaratively draw and fill the same kinds of shapes that a program can draw by using graphics objects. 

Finally, a discussion on the FlowDocument object shows you how to define items that should be flowed across multiple pages as space permits. This lets you display text, graphics, controls, and other items that automatically flow across page breaks. FlowDocument viewers make displaying these documents easy for you, and simplifies the user's reading of the documents. 

This Wrox Blox also contains 35 example programs written in C# 2008, although most of the code works in previous versions of C# as well. The most notable exceptions are WPF graphics and FlowDocuments, both of which require WPF provided in .NET Framework 3.0 and later. 

Table of Contents

Section 1: Using Graphics, Pens, and Brushes 2

Getting a Graphics Object 3

Using a Graphics Object 5

Creating Pens 8

Creating Brushes 11

Section 1 Wrap-up 14

Section 2: Using Advanced Pens and Brushes 15

Custom Dash Patterns 15

Longitudinal Stripes 16

Custom End Caps 18

Linear Gradient Brushes 19

Path Gradient Brushes 21

Section 2 Wrap-up 22

Section 3: Drawing Text 23

Drawing Simple Text 23

Using Layout Rectangles 24

Section 3 Wrap-up 28

Section 4: Manipulating Images 28

Creating and Loading Bitmaps 29

Manipulating Bitmaps 31

Saving Image Files 33

Section 4 Wrap-up 35

Section 5: Using Transformations 35

Basic Transformations 35

World Coordinate Mapping 38

Section 5 Wrap-up 42

Section 6: Printing 42

Using PrintPage 43

Using Other Event Handlers 46

Printing Transformations 48

Section 6 Wrap-up 51

Section 7: Using WPF Graphics 51

Decorative Controls 51

Shape Controls 52

Brushes 56

Section 7 Wrap-up 60

Section 8: Building FlowDocuments 60

BlockUIContainer 61

List 61

Paragraph 61

Section 61

Table 61

Section 8 Wrap-up 63

Conclusion 64

About Rod Stephens 65 

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