The big XPS-issue and printing thread

[wstaelens]

Description

Since the first release of .NET Core not everything seems to be fully implemented or ported from .NET Framework to .NET Core.
Now we are at .net 7 at .net 8, and still we are not being able to e.g. open XPS documents generated by the XPSDrv because code was not ported or contains bugs. The list of XPS and print related tickets, issues is long, I list a few from several domains.

This is a cry for help to get some attention to the XPS/print thing.

We know XPS and printing aren't sexy, but just because they're unpopular doesn't mean they shouldn't be given attention.

• XPS documents in .NET Core can't be opened #51929

• XPS documents in .NET Core can't be opened wpf#3546

• WIP: Proof of concept port of interleave feature #78374

• .NET 5 - Printing - XPS requires STA Threads wpf#4000

• https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Improve-XPS-printing-STA/690912

• Remove ArrayLists wpf#8406

• Remove ArrayLists from WPF / XPS to improve code and performance wpf#6426

• IOException in ZipArchiveEntry.OpenInUpdateMode when printing wpf#6842

• XPSDocumentWriter silent failure wpf#3750

• XPS documents from print driver are terribly slow #51930

• XpsDocumentWriter.SaveAsXaml - BitmapMetadata is not available on BitmapImage wpf#6386

• IOException when viewing XpsDocument with DocumentViewer #39430

• XPS documents memory leak (System.Windows.ContextLayoutManager+LayoutQueue+Request and XpsDocument.GetFixedDocumentSequence()) wpf#6301

• XPS documents memory leak (System.Windows.ContextLayoutManager+LayoutQueue+Request and XpsDocument.GetFixedDocumentSequence()) #66756

• WPF Textblock text clipped when writing to XPS if textblock has dropshadoweffect and inside a Viewbox wpf#3745

• SerializerDescriptor relies on unsupported reflection API and will always throw wpf#4479

• No JobCopiesAllDocuments feature in the xps file generated by XpsDrvSmpl microsoft/Windows-driver-samples#762

• Printing XPS files fails on Windows 8.1 wpf#2106

• Close Stream when creating an ImageSource from a Uri wpf#6843

• XamlReader.Load Failures wpf#3206

• Update XPS Serialization Stack for Packaging/Compression Semantic Changes wpf#2085

• Drop shadow causes clipping when saved to XPS wpf#2047

• Cross platform support for XPS wpf#470

• IOException in ZipArchiveEntry.OpenInUpdateMode when printing wpf#6842

• https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues?q=XPS

• https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues?q=XPS

• https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues?q=XPS

• {StaticResource} references are broken for XPS Paths after December2022 security patch wpf#7436

• https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/KB5022083---Broken-XPS-prinintg-in-WPF-A/10233950?q=xps

• https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/78629#issuecomment-1386307405  (thread safety issue, since 2013)

• Printing from WPF is leaving random small spaces in the text when using Arial or Calibri fonts wpf#7499 - GlyphSerializer rounding fix wpf#7545

• Rendering WPF controls to XPS fails on ARM64 wpf#7494

• Text rendering with alpha in Color renders incorrectly wpf#7711

• Change in reusing visuals in different threads? wpf#7714

• [Feature Request]: Modern library for printer communication and print control #75628

• Supersede System.Printing wpf#7259

• [Performance] Rewrite DirectWriteForwarder in C# to improve rendering performance wpf#5305

• Support for nullability annotations wpf#7563

• .NET core WPF print dialog freeze/not supported exception wpf#2609

• PrintServer.GetPrintQueues throws NullReferenceException wpf#8339

• Matchad Prime clipboard bugs after NET 7.0 installation #80815

• Print Dialog Settings in Windows 11 22H2 Not Honored wpf#8355

• Print preview is not taking over the given print settings wpf#8529

• Printer tray changes are not detected by papersources winforms#9034

• System.Drawing.Printing.PrinterSettings slow winforms#8839

• Control printing test coverage winforms#3540

• set PrintQueue.CreateXpsDocumentWriter owner wpf#6768

• UIElement.Measure not threadsafe in .NET 7+ wpf#8447

• [Feature Request] Printing UI for MAUI Windows/Android/iOS maui#9931

• Printing in MAUI CommunityToolkit/Maui#562

• Controlling the print dialog/window MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback#42

• IOException in ZipArchiveEntry.OpenInUpdateMode when printing wpf#9418

• [API Proposal]: Print without PrintQueue abstraction using the modern print dialog wpf#8940

• https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=xps+memory

Reproduction Steps

use XPS

Expected behavior

fast, multi-threaded, bug-free XPS drivers, libraries, runtime, sdk's, ...

XPS is a great format (knowing what garbage you can find in PDF documents).

Actual behavior

Slow, high memory, high cpu, unable to open xps files, bugs, ...

Regression?

.NET Framework is somewhat ok, but .net core/.net versions are not.

Known Workarounds

none :sad:

Configuration

No response

Other information

The frustrations towards Microsoft are high, very high, after all these years. Please give some attention to XPS and printing.

[ghost]

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Issue Details

---

Description

Since the first release of .NET Core not everything seems to be fully implemented or ported from .NET Framework to .NET Core.
Now we are at .net 7, and still we are not being able to e.g. open XPS documents generated by the XPSDrv because code was not ported or contains bugs. The list of XPS tickets, issues is long, I list a few from several domains.

This is a cry for help to get some attention to the XPS/print thing.

We know XPS and printing aren't sexy, but just because they're unpopular doesn't mean they shouldn't be given attention.

• XPS documents in .NET Core can't be opened #51929
• XPS documents in .NET Core can't be opened wpf#3546
• IOException in ZipArchiveEntry.OpenInUpdateMode when printing wpf#6842
• XPSDocumentWriter silent failure wpf#3750
• XPS documents from print driver are terribly slow #51930
• XpsDocumentWriter.SaveAsXaml - BitmapMetadata is not available on BitmapImage wpf#6386
• IOException when viewing XpsDocument with DocumentViewer #39430
• XPS documents memory leak (System.Windows.ContextLayoutManager+LayoutQueue+Request and XpsDocument.GetFixedDocumentSequence()) wpf#6301
• XPS documents memory leak (System.Windows.ContextLayoutManager+LayoutQueue+Request and XpsDocument.GetFixedDocumentSequence()) #66756
• WPF Textblock text clipped when writing to XPS if textblock has dropshadoweffect and inside a Viewbox wpf#3745
• SerializerDescriptor relies on unsupported reflection API and will always throw wpf#4479
• No JobCopiesAllDocuments feature in the xps file generated by XpsDrvSmpl microsoft/Windows-driver-samples#762
• Printing XPS files fails on Windows 8.1 wpf#2106
• Close Stream when creating an ImageSource from a Uri wpf#6843
• XamlReader.Load Failures wpf#3206
• Update XPS Serialization Stack for Packaging/Compression Semantic Changes wpf#2085
• Drop shadow causes clipping when saved to XPS wpf#2047
• Cross platform support for XPS wpf#470
• IOException in ZipArchiveEntry.OpenInUpdateMode when printing wpf#6842
• https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues?q=XPS
• https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues?q=XPS
• https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues?q=XPS

Reproduction Steps

use XPS

Expected behavior

fast, multi-threaded, bug-free XPS drivers, libraries, runtime, sdk's, ...

XPS is a great format (knowing what garbage you can find in PDF documents).

Actual behavior

Slow, high memory, high cpu, unable to open xps files, bugs, ...

Regression?

.NET Framework is somewhat ok, but .net core/.net versions are not.

Known Workarounds

none :sad

Configuration

No response

Other information

The frustrations towards Microsoft are high, very high, after all these years. Please give some attention to XPS and printing.

Author:	wstaelens
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-Meta, untriaged
Milestone:	-

[jeffhandley]

Thank you for organizing this info @wstaelens; that's very helpful. We will review further to see if there are opportunities for some small wins during .NET 8 and/or if there are issues where we can apply the help wanted [up-for-grabs] Good issue for external contributors label and give guidance for how we think the issues should be addressed.

[Terumasa1972]

There has been a little development from .NetFrameWork 4.8 to 4.8.1 on GabageCollection.
But there seems to be some bugs still.
XpsDocumentWriter never release its resource and cannot be desposed.So I am suffering from printing a second fixedpage made by my custom FixedDocumentPaginator.It writes the same fixedpage to one in first time.

[bradleypeet]

Anyone know if the thread safety issue in System.Windows.Xps.Serialization.SerializableObjectContext was ever fixed? I escalated a case with Microsoft and came up with my own workaround back in 2013.

[wstaelens]

Anyone know if the thread safety issue in System.Windows.Xps.Serialization.SerializableObjectContext was ever fixed? I escalated a case with Microsoft and came up with my own workaround back in 2013.

no idea, added it to the list @bradleypeet maybe you can mention the original case number? I really do hope it is fixed but I doubt it...

[wstaelens]

Updated the list with new tickets regarding XPS and printing.

[wstaelens]

Any updates on .net 8 regarding XPS?

[wstaelens]

wish @davidfowl worked on this. 😅

[neplan]

Hi to all,

We have an application where the printing is quite an important task!
At the moment all our Windows 11 users have problems with the print preview. The settings from our application are not applied to the print preview. This is a big problem for us!
Is there any workaround to solve this problem? The bug is there since one year and nothing is done since then?

Best regards,

Alessandro

[wstaelens]

Good luck @neplan I don't think @jeffhandley and his team are spending any time on this. 😞 Been waiting for years.

[neplan]

@wstaelens this is really terrible that such a basing thing is ignored completely! You didn't find any workaround or an external library or so?

[wstaelens]

@neplan printing in Windows is internally XPS (gdi is being converted to XPS).
XPS is a subset of XAML (whohoo!!) . I also don't understand why nobody gives a #!@§! about it (for years already...)

Looking forward to reading the next excuse again.

@neplan I would suggest to wait for @jeffhandley and his team....

[znakeeye]

Anyone know if the thread safety issue in System.Windows.Xps.Serialization.SerializableObjectContext was ever fixed? I escalated a case with Microsoft and came up with my own workaround back in 2013.

Wow. I came up with the exact same hack, though calling the Clear() method instead. It's a bit unfortunate that you didn't provide this in text format. Googling this SerializableObjectContext leak takes you nowhere.

[wstaelens]

The list received some updates (new items added, items closed)

[mdell-seradex]

Glad to see that there has been a little progress on addressing printing issues!

I really hope those issues which can cause generic slowdowns and exceptions for most if not all attempts at printing in .NET, get fixed soon, and get ported back to older versions of .NET where applicable. Some of those have been plaguing systems intermittently for years without a permanent solution for our clients, and they ask about them everytime.