FREE WINDOWS METAFILE (WMF) - GRAPHICS FILE FORMAT FROM MICROSOFT
A WMF is a 16-bit format introduced in Windows 3.0. It is the native vector format for Microsoft Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher.
Windows Metafile (WMF) is a graphics file format on Microsoft Windows systems, originally designed in the early 1990s. Windows Metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and may contain both vector graphics and bitmap components. Essentially, a WMF file stores a list of function calls that have to be issued to the Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) layer in order to display an image on screen. Since some GDI functions accept pointers to callback functions for error handling, a WMF file may erroneously include executable code. A newer 32-bit version with additional commands is called Enhanced Metafile (EMF). EMF is also used as a graphics language for printer drivers. With the release of Windows XP, the Enhanced Metafile Format Plus Extensions (EMF+) format was introduced. EMF+ provides a way to serialize calls to the GDI+ API in the same way that WMF/EMF stores calls to GDI. There are also compressed versions of Windows Metafiles known as Compressed Windows Metafile (WMZ) and Compressed Windows Enhanced Metafile (EMZ). |
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