Metafile manipulations

Question

Hi!

Need your ideas urgently! I have a metafile which I wish to convert to PDF on the fly. The idea is to create a metafile template with placeholder text, which will be parsed and replaced by user information at runtime before generating the PDF. When editing the metafile, I have progressed to the following steps:

1. Called the Graphics.EnumerateMetaFile() method, which calls the callback method (lets call it ‘Play’)

2. Called the callback method and obtain the record data

public bool Play(EmfPlusRecordType recordType, int flags, int datasize, IntPtr data, PlayRecordCallback callback)

{

byte[] dataArray = null;

if (data != IntPtr.Zero)

{

dataArray = new byte[datasize];

Marshal.Copy(data, dataArray, 0, datasize);

}

3. Checked whether the record pertains to writing text on the wmf as follows:

if (recordType == EmfPlusRecordType.DrawString)

Called the Metafile.PlayRecord() method to draw the new metafile.

mf.PlayRecord(recordType, flags, datasize, dataArray);

What I’m unable to do is, to parse the dataarray (which contains record data), such that I can replace existing text with new text.

Thanks a LOT for any insights.

Regards,

Kunaal

Omar Alobidat · Answer

Hi First you need to read trough the documentation of the WMF EMF and EMF+ and get data layout for each record you are interested in . Then Use the BitConverter to read data form the byte array and covert it to correct data type as defined in the record information. Examples: Single val = BitConverter.ToSingle(DataArray Position); Double val = BitConverter.ToDouble(DataArray Position); System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream(DataArray Position size); Image img = System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(ms);