Question about encoding string Icons in xaml

Question

I was looking in a project and realized that they used some strings like this

<system:String x:Key="icon-arrow-right">&#xedd3;</system:String>

and then in a XAML form they used it like this

      <Button  Content="{StaticResource icon-arrow-right}" />

I wonder how the encoding works and also is there a place to find a list of icons and their related code like &#xedd3 that I mentioned before?

maybe it is achieved by custom font? stackoverflow.com/questions/38305239/… — ASh
– ASh, Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 12:52

Andy · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-29 12:27:44Z

0

XAML is essentially xml and that is xml numeric specifying a character. You can look them up. Often shown as html numeric codes in web pages show such things.

EG α would be alpha.
https://www.rapidtables.com/code/text/unicode-characters.html

You could alternatively find a character from that page and paste it in. Like

<system:String x:Key="icon-alpha">α</system:String>

That would be my preference for a string since you can see it right there.

This is quite a limited way of doing icons though. You ought to get a fairly smooth character if the font size matches what you need because it's true type. But font size doesn't scale.
I tend to use geometries for iconography and fancy lettering. The geometry then defines the data for a path. I would usually put such geometries in a separate resource dictionary which is merged in app.xaml.

To give you a rough idea.

<Window.Resources>
    <Geometry x:Key="icon_Play_Geometry">
        "M36,16.8,46.8 36,76.8 36,16.8z"
    </Geometry>
</Window.Resources>
    <Grid>
    <Button>
        <Path Fill="Red"
              Data="{StaticResource icon_Play_Geometry}"
              Stretch="Fill"/>
    </Button>
</Grid>

I'd want a bit more sophisticated than just a big triangle fills the button for production code, obviously.

I obtain the geometries using syncfusion metro studio. Which is free. But I think Blend can extract geometries from characters. You can also find svg online and use the geometry out one of those. For some things where I just have a jpg to work with I use the functionality in inkscape ( which is free ) to automagically "trace" bitmap to vector and export xaml.

answered Dec 29, 2021 at 12:27

Andy

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3 Comments

ASh Over a year ago

"This is quite a limited way of doing icons though" - except that some typography expert can create custom font which will draw "alpha" unicode character as whatever they want (like font awesome does with some codes)

Andy Over a year ago

You could go find a typography expert and get them to build you a custom font. I'm not clear what advantage that would have over a more generic sort of an artist building custom geometries. Maybe you just like font awesome? Wouldn't any font potentially suffer from the same scaling issue I described though?

Behnam Lotfi Over a year ago

Thanks it was a big help, because of my low reputation , I couldn't vote for the answer but thanks anyway.

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