The reason it cannot be inherited is because HttpWebRequest does not have a public default constructor that takes zero arguments. If you use code like this (note: not safe, you must provide proper arguments for base(..,..)) it will compile and work:

public class SafeHttpWebRequest : HttpWebRequest
{
public SafeHttpWebRequest() : base(null, new StreamingContext()) { /* do something */ }
}

(6 years after you asked) here's a solution. At the time GetGlyphOutline was not directly accessible through .NET. However, since .NET 3.0 and 3.5 the function has been added. You can now use it directly from you C# or VB code, but note that the method is not CLS compliant (as Microsoft states): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.glyphtypeface.getglyphoutline.aspx[^] -- Abel --