Office File API Subscription - v18.2 and What You Can Expect in mid-November

The upcoming release of our Office File API Subscription (v18.2) will include some major improvements in document rendering and our printing and export engine. 

Right-To-Left Support

We are improving how the DevExpress Word Processing Document API processes documents with RTL content. This new feature will allow you to load, print and export (to PDF) documents with the right-to-left text direction. Full RTL support will not be completed in this release cycle (for instance, we will not be able to reorder table columns in RTL documents), but our goal is to deliver a solution that addresses the broadest possible rendering scenarios in v18.2. 

Shape Support

With this release, the DevExpress Word Processing Document API will support major shape types. 

As you might expect, the new release will allow you to print and export (to PDF) documents that contain shapes. Please note that this update will not include an API to manage shapes in code. In addition, a few restrictions will remain when rendering complex shape groups. 

Continuous Section Breaks

Our new Word Processing Document API will allow you to load, print and export documents with continuous section breaks. You can control this option in code using our implemented API. 

Paragraph Options

This release will include a group of new and improved paragraph options: 

Widow/Orphan Lines Control

You can now use the Widow/Orphan Control feature in our Word Processing Document API to prevent the first or last paragraph line from appearing at the bottom or top of a page. 

Keep Lines Together and Keep with Next Options

We have improved our "Keep lines together" option so that it mirrors Microsoft Word. In addition, we’ve introduced a new "Keep with next" option so you can keep multiple paragraphs on the same page. 

Paragraph Borders

Our Word Processing Document API now supports paragraph borders. You can load/save, print and export (to PDF) documents with paragraph borders. 

v18.2 will not fully support paragraph options in tables. We are aware of this limitation and will resolve this restriction in future release cycles. 

Spreadsheet Document API Improvements

Rich Text API

With this release, you can programmatically create and edit rich formatted text within a cell. We are focused on extending this capability and in future iterations, will introduce printing and export options for rich text content. 

Shape API

You can now programmatically create new shapes, connect and group them, change a shape’s fill and outline settings, add text to a shape, and remove shapes from a document. 

Sparklines Rendering

With this release, sparklines can be printed and exported to PDF. 

PDF Document API changes

In our last release cycle (v18.1), we announced the availability of DirectX document rendering support. With our upcoming release (v18.2), DirectX rendering will move out of beta and will be used as our default rendering engine.  

Try it now!

If you are an active DevExpress Universal subscriber and would like to test these features prior to its official release, please email our support team at support@devexpress.com or create a separate private ticket in the Support Center. With that, we can verify your account and provide you with a v18.2 preview installation private. 

If you are using a trial and want to use these features today, you can purchase a DevExpress Universal license online (this will give you access to early builds such as this CTP). If you own a non-Universal subscription and are ready to upgrade, email us at clientservices@devexpress.com for preferential upgrade pricing. 

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