DevExpress.Drawing Graphics Library

• Jan 26, 2023
• 3 minutes to read

The DevExpress.Drawing Graphics Library contains the basic drawing functionality for DevExpress components. This library ships with the DevExpress primitives, which serve as counterparts for the System.Drawing primitives (Font, Pen, Brush, and so on).

The DevExpress.Drawing Graphics Library is available for the following products:

• DevExpress Reporting
• Office File API
  • Barcode Generation API
  • Spreadsheet Document API
  • Word Document API
  • PDF Document API
• DevExpress BI Dashboard (export to image/PDF)

The library can utilize two drawing engines: one based on GDI+, another based on SkiaSharp. This article describes the library usage with different operating systems and frameworks, and limitations in each supported product.

Default Drawing Library Behavior (GDI+)

The DevExpress.Drawing library automatically enables the GDI+ engine. No additional references or actions are required.

System.Drawing.Common Compatibility Issues

The GDI+ engine is not compatible with the System.Drawing.Common package version 7 and higher in non-Windows environments. If your application depends on that package, a NotSupportedException is thrown. In this case, you need to switch the drawing engine to Skia-based render. See the following section for instructions.

Enable the SkiaSharp Drawing Engine

To enable the SkiaSharp-based engine, add the following packages to your application:

• DevExpress.Drawing
• DevExpress.Drawing.Skia (if your application uses the System.Drawing.Common package version 7 and higher)
• Microsoft.ICU.ICU4C.Runtime

If the engine is not enabled automatically and the NotSupportedException is thrown, call the DevExpress.Drawing.Internal.DXDrawingEngine.ForceSkia() method to force the Skia-based rendering. Please note that this API is marked as internal and we may change it in the future.

Refer to the following article for more information on library troubleshooting:

Read Tutorial: Troubleshooting

Tip

If you use the DevExpress.Drawing library reference instead of a NuGet package to enable the Skia engine, you may wish to add references to the following packages:

• System.Drawing.Common
• SkiaSharp
• SkiaSharp.NativeAssets.Linux
• SkiaSharp.HarfBuzz
• HarfBuzzSharp.NativeAssets.Linux

Limitations

The library ships with limitations in the products listed below:

Office File API

GDI+

The capability to print documents, workbooks, and PDF files is not available in Office File API on Linux and macOS.

Skia

The following features are not available in Office File API if you use the SkiaSharp-based drawing engine:

• The PDF Graphics subset of the PDF Document API
• Print and export shapes in Word and Spreadsheet documents
• Export PDF files to bitmap images

Reporting

GDI+

DevExpress Reporting has the following limitations if you use the GDI+ engine:

• Export to EMF and WMF image formats is not supported on Linux.
• Deserialization from CodeDOM format is not supported.
• The ImageExportOptions.Resolution property does not work in Linux- and Mac-based environments.
• Mac-based environments cannot embed fonts in exported PDF files.

Skia

The following features are not available in the Reporting tools if you use the SkiaSharp-based drawing engine:

• Server-side printing
• XRPdfContent export
• XRGauge export

BI Dashboard

Skia

The export of the following items is not available if you use the SkiaSharp-based drawing engine:

• GaugeDashboardItem
• TreemapDashboardItem