Hello,
I'm writing an application that should look like for example a very simple version of CorelDraw. It should allow user to edit a single page document and put some elements (lines, images, text boxes) at fixed positions. Elements can be on top each other and can use opacity different than 1.0. But I only need a very simple "flow management" like allowing text entered into a text box to be aligned (left, right, center). No cross page "flow".
Later such document needs to be loaded and used as a template when connecting to data from a database. Result of such connection would be a document with hundreds of similar pages. Each page should be editable before printing in case something went wrong.
At first I tried to use FlowDocument, but it quickly went bad as there were problems with keeping elements of a document at fixed positions.
So I switched to FixedDocument. It looked promising, I can implement a very simple editor, add elements, edit text with rich text editor. But... I have problems with serializing resulting FixedDocument.
At first I tried to serialize to XPS (as it looked like a standard topic when searching the web for serializing FixedDocument). It went OK, document was successfully serialized, I could read it back and show it. Unfortunatelly objects structure is not kept so I can't find any way to continue editing after reading back the XPS (or to connect it with data from a database).
I tried to add custom file to Zip file and write required data to that custom file. Data that would be required to continue the work with the document. Unfortunatelly it quickly started to look like Im writing everything in that custom file and cant use XPS at all.
Ok, I don't need XPS here. I'm trying to just serialize FixedDocument to XAML file hoping I will get the same FixedDocument after deserializing it later.
First attempt was to just use System.Xaml.XamlServices.Save. It produced nice xaml file, but unfortunatelly it lacked required details. Bitmaps are only saved as addresses of a file (I can't find a way to make is similar to serializing FlowDocument as a package - so that files would be copied too) and it lacks extra parameters of objects (like those added by FixedPage.SetLeft).
I'm starting to think about using XamlObjectWriter and adjusting Xaml generated by custom code, but... maybe I'm doing it the wrong way again?
Is there any standard way to store a FixedDocument and later read it back and continue working with it?