WPF to PDF Update 09/23/2010: We have released a 100% managed SDK called NiPDF v1.0 which makes it even easier to go from WPF to PDF. Take a look at the code sample here

The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF short) is the UI programming framework that Microsoft introduced with the release of .NET v2.0. It is a very comprehensive, and powerful UI model that seems to be picking up steam in developer cycles.

Creating an XPS file from a WPF visual is very easy; if you combine this with our NiXPS SDK to convert XPS to PDF, you can very quickly add a nice PDF output feature to your WPF application.

As a matter of fact I've gave it a try, and the following code snippit draws a WPF visual, converts it to XPS and then uses the NiXPS SDK to write out a pdf:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.IO.Packaging;
using System.IO;
using System.Windows.Xps.Packaging;
using System.Printing;
using System.Windows.Xps;

namespace NiXPSObjects 
{

class WPF2PDF
{

static Visual CreateVisual()
{
    const double Inch = 96;
    DrawingVisual visual = new DrawingVisual();
    DrawingContext dc = visual.RenderOpen();
    Pen bluePen = new Pen(Brushes.Blue, 1);
    dc.DrawRectangle(Brushes.Yellow, bluePen, new Rect(Inch / 2, Inch / 2, Inch * 1.5, Inch * 1.5));
    Brush pinkBrush = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(128, 255, 0, 255));
    Pen blackPen = new Pen(Brushes.Black, 1);
    dc.DrawEllipse(pinkBrush, blackPen, new Point(Inch * 2.25, Inch * 2), Inch * 1.25, Inch);
    dc.Close();
    return visual;
}

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
 try
 {
        // create XPS file based on a WPF Visual, and store it in a memorystream
        MemoryStream lMemoryStream = new MemoryStream();
        Package package = Package.Open(lMemoryStream, FileMode.Create);
        XpsDocument doc = new XpsDocument(package);
        XpsDocumentWriter writer = XpsDocument.CreateXpsDocumentWriter(doc);
        writer.Write(CreateVisual());
        doc.Close();
        package.Close();

        // now open this XPS stream in the NiXPS SDK, and export it as pdf
        NOPackage lPackage = NOPackage.readPackageFromBuffer("file.xps", lMemoryStream.GetBuffer(), (uint) lMemoryStream.Length);
        NOProgressReporter lReporter = new NOProgressReporter();
        lPackage.getDocument(0).exportToPDF("file.pdf", lReporter);
        NOPackage.destroyPackage(ref lPackage);
 } catch (NOException e)
 {
  System.Console.Out.WriteLine( "EXCEPTION: 0x" + string.Format("{0:X}", e.getError()) );
 }
}
}
}

As a WPF developer you are getting 2 important benefits here:

1. You can use the XPS as the printing output of your application. Giving your end-user a higher quality print-out.
   
2. Allowing your user to save the output as PDF and/or XPS, which are ideal formats for sharing.
   

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