Wpf: Bringing WriteableBitmapEx into WPF?

[reneschulte]

Hi,

Is there interest in a PR to bring WirteableBitmapEx extensions for the WriteableBitmap into WPF? 🤔
https://github.com/teichgraf/WriteableBitmapEx

It's a long going and stable project I've created many years ago and keep on maintaining. It was all started because the built-in WriteableBitmap lacks functionality. Now with WPF being open source we could fix that and make it part of core WPF. 🤩

[karelz]

The license of that project is MIT, which is good & compatible with our license.
Does it add new APIs? If yes, the APIs would need to be reviewed first - see Issue Guide (Labels - api-suggestion).
How large would the change be? (with/without tests - hundres, thousands, or more LOC)

Given that 3.0 primary focus is parity with .NET Framework - see our docs, it will likely need to wait until post-3.0 for final decision.
I will let WPF team comment on if it is something they might consider post-3.0, or if it goes against their long-term plans & principals.

[reneschulte]

Thanks @karelz for the quick reply. Please add those labels: enhancement, api-suggestion

The change would be around hundreds of lines but no impact on core elements as it's really just targeting the WriteableBitmap. Understood though if this is not a prio at the moment. Looking forward to the WPF's team comments if this feasible at all.

[lbugnion]

I think it would be a great addition. This library is extremely useful for advanced (and even not so advanced) bitmap manipulations.

[dotMorten]

Devils advocate: Would the library be any better by being in wpf, vs being where it is now? Why not keep it as a separate package?

[reneschulte]

Valid point @dotMorten 🙌

The whole lib started because the there was not the desired functionality in WriteableBitmap and it's really just extending the existing WB using extension methods.
I heard it quite often from other developers that the WBX functionality should be built-in and the majority of users targets WPF with the lib. WBX is around for many years now and in the recent years I have not made a lot of changes and it's quite stable I would say.

Anyway, I'm fully open to suggestions, we could also think about to pick the most requested methods like Crop, Rotate, Resize, etc.
Also no hard feelings if the benefit of adding missing functionality does not outweigh potential bugs in WPF. I'm just offering the functionality of my library and some of my time to create a PR.

[dotMorten]

@teichgraf In that case perhaps this issue should be clear about which methods to add to WritableBitmap directly, rather than just adding the WriteableBitmapEx extension methods (which is what it sounded like at first). I think that approach makes a lot more sense.
The bitmap APIs could use several improvements - For instance I logged issue 39 to improve the ImageSource to allow us to clear the cached bitmap to allow for dynamically updating the bitmaps

[reneschulte]

Does Microsoft have any data/metrics what are the most requested missing features of WB? Not sure if user voice has any of those or if Docs tracks some metrics what people search for.

[lindexi]

And I want to bring win2d to wpf