DrawingML is used to represent the rich shapes, colors, diagrams and charts in OOXML documents.
I am happy to tell that we have a big project underway to make sure Aspose.Words can render all DrawingML into its fixed-page outputs including PDF, XPS, graphics and printing.
At the moment Aspose.Words can only preserve DrawingML during DOCX open/save cycles and not much else. Aspose.Words can render DrawingML pictures, but cannot render other DrawingML shapes.
We will be releasing DrawingML functionality in iterations, every new release will have something new and improved in this area.
The upcoming Aspose.Words for .NET 9.5 has some basic DrawingML rendering functionality. Only custom geometry is rendered and it always uses black thin pen, no fills, no groups etc. One release after that we plan to support all preset geometries so you will be able to at least see the outline of the DrawingML shapes.
Below is how the original document and Aspose.Words produced output will look in Aspose.Words 9.5.
Original document opened in Microsoft Word:
PDF file generated by Aspose.Words.
Just a note, don’t worry that the PDF above “looks bad”. We are talking only about OOXML DrawingML shapes here. DrawingML is quite new and not many Word documents include DrawingML shapes.
Most of the Word documents out there still have shapes in the earlier VML (Vector Markup Language) format and Aspose.Words supports rendering of VML shapes very well.