Considering Development Systems

The LEADTOOLS .NET Class Library is designed as a standard .NET Class Library. You should be able to use the LEADTOOLS .NET Class Library with any compiler that supports .NET.

Most of the LEADTOOLS example programs and all of the documented code examples are for Windows programs written in C#.

The following topics list the files that need to be included with your application deployments:

• Files To Be Included With Your Application
• Files to be Included with Your Java Application
• OCR Files To Be Included With Your Application

Rendering Across Different Platforms

Choosing which draw engine to use in an application depends, in part, on which platforms the application is targeted for deployment:

• If an application will be deployed exclusively to Windows platforms, use DrawEngineType.DefaultEngine. It is based on Windows GDI/GDI+ and produces the fastest rendering.

• If an application will be deployed to both Windows and non-Windows platforms (such as Linux, Android, macOS, iOS, and Universal Windows Platform (UWP)), use DrawEngineType.MultiplatformEngine. This ensures identical rendering across all platforms.

For more information, refer to LEADTOOLS Draw Engine and Multi-Platform Considerations and RasterImage and GDI/GDI+.

LEADTOOLS and Microsoft ClickOnce

Applications created using LEADTOOLS .NET assemblies are fully compatible with Microsoft ClickOnce technology. ClickOnce, supported under Visual Studio, allows developers to deploy applications easily via a web server, rather than via an installer. This allows for rapid, simple updates by re-publishing the application. The application can be configured so that when run from the client, it will automatically check and download available updates. Refer to MSDN for a ClickOnce tutorial.

When deploying LEADTOOLS SDK applications, remember to add all LEADTOOLS file filter DLLs that you plan to support as references. If this is not done, the ClickOnce deployment tool will not deploy them to the client machine. For a list of required file filter DLLs, refer to: Files To Be Included With Your Application.

See LEADTOOLS Microsoft Click Once Technology for online examples of LEADTOOLS demos published using ClickOnce.

Using the 64-bit LEADTOOLS Controls

Visual Studio is a 32-bit application and 32-bit applications cannot load 64-bit assemblies. If you attempt to add a 64-bit LEADTOOLS control (RasterImageViewer, RasterImageList, etc.), to the Visual Studio toolbox, Visual Studio will attempt to load the assembly and fail since a 32-bit application is attempting to load a 64-bit assembly.

The solution is to create and add the controls to your form at runtime. When you add a reference in Visual Studio, the assembly is not actually loaded. For this reason, you can add a reference to the 64-bit assembly, write your code, and compile as usual.

The following sample code demonstrates how to create and add the LEADTOOLS RasterImageViewer to your form at runtime.

Leadtools.WinForms.RasterImageViewer rasterImageViewer1; 
rasterImageViewer1 = new Leadtools.WinForms.RasterImageViewer(); 
rasterImageViewer1.Location = new Point(10, 10); 
rasterImageViewer1.Size = new Size(500, 500); 
this.Controls.Add(rasterImageViewer1); 

Using LEADTOOLS With Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4

LEADTOOLS ships with binaries for both .NET 2/3 and .NET 4. Many of the LEADTOOLS .NET 2/3 assemblies (including Leadtools.dll) are mixed mode assemblies that are built to target the .NET Framework 2.0. If you develop your application using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and target the .NET 4 Framework then you should use the .NET 4 binaries, which are located in the folder: \Bin\DotNet4.

If you use the LEADTOOLS .NET 2/3 binaries in your VS 2010 built application, you will receive an error when you execute your application that says:

"Mixed mode assembly is built against version v2.0.50727 of the runtime and cannot be loaded in the 4.0 runtime without additional configuration information."

To resolve this error, use the LEADTOOLS .NET 4 binaries, or modify your application's configuration file as follows: useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">