Fix for a crash when viewing some XPS/XOD files in Silverlight

[Support]

Q:

 

We have PDF documents which we transform to XPS/XOD documents (via PDFTron WebPublisher).

 We have encountered an issue when viewing some XPS files in Silverlight. Some files just bring down not only the Silverlight plugin, but the whole browser (same behavior in IE, Firefox & Chrome, on Chrome and newer versions of Firefox “only” the plugin crashes).  The crash occurs only os specific type of files.

 

Please note that the document itself doesn’t crash the browser immediately, but rather when accessing a certain pages

 

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A:

 

You are probable experiencing a bug in Silverlight itself that is triggered by rotated text. We reported the problem to Microsoft some time ago, but until they fix it we have implemented a workaround on our side that converts all rotated text to paths. You can enable the workaround by using the --silverlight_text_workaround in the command line tool, or SetSilverlightTextWorkaround(true) (in XODOutputOptions) in the SDK.

It is hard to say whetehr Microsoft will ever fix the bug. If you would like to "vote" for the public bug report you can do so here:  https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/742471/silverlight-forum-certain-font-and-rendertransform-combination-crashes-silverlight-r

 

In case it fits with your current product or future roadmap, we also have Flash and HTML5 controls that can display .xod files, and they do not need to use the workaround since they do not rely on Silverlight. More information can be found here: http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/webviewer/