We made a series of enhancements to the DevExpress.Drawing graphics library recently (v22.2.4). This blog post summarizes what we delivered to date and what we are working on at present.
If you’re unfamiliar with this topic, please refer to the following post published earlier this year:
DevExpress.Drawing Graphics Library — v22.2 Update — SkiaSharp for .NET 6/7 and Linux Support (CTP)
Changes in Package Dependencies
As you may already know, in addition to the DevExpress.Drawing.Skia package, our SkiaSharp-based drawing engine required installation of native dependencies (such as freetype and harfbuzz). To simplify deployment and distribution, we modified the way our library references and uses native dependencies. As a result, you no longer need to manually install the abovementioned font libraries to use our products on Linux on macOS. With this minor update, only the following packages are required:
We have updated our docker files for different Linux distributions. You can use them to configure your environment and install all required libraries. You can download these files here:
How to Use the SkiaSharp-Based DevExpress Drawing Engine
In addition, we updated the related sections of our online help system. Please refer to the following articles for product-specific information:
Documentation Updates
We added documentation on the DevExpress.Drawing library itself. In it, you can find information about prerequisites, operating system compatibility, supported products, etc. The section contains a troubleshooting guide based on customer feedback received so far (and an article about the use of the DXFontRepository class to manage custom fonts not installed on the operating system). Please refer to the following entry article for more information:
DevExpress.Drawing Graphics Library
Replacements and Enhancements
We’ve already begun to incorporate additional enhancements to the drawing library. We are removing enumerations from the System.Drawing assembly (for DevExpress Reporting tools) and replacing them with cross-platform counterparts. For instance, PaperKind was replaced by DXPaperKind, GraphicsUnit -> DXGraphicsUnit, etc. We will publish a complete list of replacements as we get closer to the final release.
As mentioned in our previous blog post, the main goal for this release cycle is to address warnings within apps deployed to non-Windows environments. While these updates may lead to a breaking change, we are doing everything possible to minimize the amount of manual work you’ll have to undertake.
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