Possibility to export (XAML) view in PDF

[alessandro-gandolfi-ors]

Technically this feature was possible in versions before 11, since then a lot of classes can't be accessed and it's not possible without using reflection.

This could be useful when in a program someone would like to export charts or other dinamically rendered content.

With the headless platform, it could be even used to create a service to create a report (which is my goal).

It was previously possible with WPF but development and support are stale and it is limited to Windows, this could be a great opportunity for Avalonia to grow.

The 2 classes that could make this possible if made public again are DrawingContext and ImmediateRender as found in the example of https://github.com/Oaz/AvaloniaUI.PrintToPDF. Other implementations are also welcome if access to those classes has to remain as it is now.

[BreyerW]

Instead of directly doing PDF consider rendering to bitmap and - if necessary - draw bitmap to pdf. If pdf isnt absolutely necessary you can save bitmap directly as image file, somewhat like here AvaloniaUI/Avalonia.HtmlRenderer#10

[alessandro-gandolfi-ors]

I don't think it would be an equal option to render directly to PDF. Text selection and search wouldn't be possible as the PDF would be generated by a bunch of images. In contexts as mine where a lot of data is displayed, those features are useful.

[maxkatz6]

See #13128, most likely Avalonia 11.1 will have this extension method shipped. With which you can use the same approach as in AvaloniaUI.PrintToPDF.

[timunie]

as this is going to be merged soon, nightly should also have it in latest tomorrow, if you are curious to try it out :-)

[alessandro-gandolfi-ors]

I will try it asap! Thanks a lot for the support!