Wavy underlines as a TextDecoration: what I am doing wrong?

Question

I want to create wavy underlines using TextDecoration (in a control similar to RichTextBox).

I did the following thing:

private static Pen CreateErrorPen() {
    var geometry = new StreamGeometry();
    using (var context = geometry.Open()) {
        context.BeginFigure(new Point(0.0, 0.0), false, false);
        context.PolyLineTo(new[] {
            new Point(0.75, 0.75),
            new Point(1.5, 0.0),
            new Point(2.25, 0.75),
            new Point(3.0, 0.0)
        }, true, true);
    }

    var brushPattern = new GeometryDrawing {
        Pen = new Pen(Brushes.Red, 0.2),
        Geometry = geometry
    };

    var brush = new DrawingBrush(brushPattern) {
        TileMode = TileMode.Tile,
        Viewport = new Rect(0.0, 1.5, 9.0, 3.0),
        ViewportUnits = BrushMappingMode.Absolute
    };

    var pen = new Pen(brush, 3.0);
    pen.Freeze();

    return pen;
}

This almost works, but depending on the underlined word position in text, underlines often show up as a pattern of several superimposed waves. Also the underlines are a bit blurry even when they are correct (wpf problem with drawing between pixels, I suppose).

My solution was kind of a trial-and-error, so I might have gone a wrong way, especially with Viewport/ViewportUnits.

What am I doing wrong and is there a way to get crisp underlines?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

bstoney had a solution to this problem here. The key seems to be setting the Viewbox as well as the Viewport such that the waves are seperated vertically, so you only get 1 in the underline.

There are some breaks in the wave that can be eliminated by extending it to the right and changing the Viewbox from so it starts from X=1 instead of 0:

<VisualBrush x:Key="WavyBrush" TileMode="Tile" Viewbox="1,0,3,3" ViewboxUnits="Absolute" Viewport="0,-1,6,4" ViewportUnits="Absolute">
    <VisualBrush.Visual>
        <Path Data="M 0,1 C 1,0 2,2 3,1 4,0 5,2 6,1" Stroke="Red" StrokeThickness="0.2"/>
    </VisualBrush.Visual>
</VisualBrush>