Silverlight’s XAML Vocabulary Specification has been published!
On Monday (October 13th, 2008), a press release announced the availability of Silverlight 2. Contained in that press release was the following mentions in bold about [MS-SLXV] Silverlight XAML Vocabulary Specification 2008 v0.9:
Continued Commitment to Openness and Interoperability
Microsoft also will release the Silverlight Control Pack and publish on MSDN the technical specification for the Silverlight Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary. The SCP, which will augment the powerful built-in control set in Silverlight, will be released under the Microsoft Permissive License, an Open Source Initiative-approved license, and includes controls such as DockPanel, ViewBox, TreeView, Accordion and AutoComplete. The Silverlight XAML vocabulary specification, released under the Open Specification Promise (OSP), will better enable third-party ISVs to create products that can read and write XAML for Silverlight.
“The Silverlight Control Pack under the Microsoft Permissive License really addresses the needs of developers by enabling them to learn how advanced controls are authored directly from the high-quality Microsoft implementation,” said Miguel de Icaza, vice president, Engineering, Novell. “By using the OSP for the Silverlight vocabulary, they further solidify their commitment to interoperability. I am impressed with the progress Microsoft continues to make, and we are extremely satisfied with the support for Moonlight and the open source community.”
Scott Guthrie also metioned [MS-SLXV] in his “Silverlight 2 Released” blog post:
“We are also announcing today that we are releasing the Silverlight XAML vocabulary and schema under the Open Specification Promise (OSP), which enables anyone to create products that read and write XAML for Silverlight.”
What is in [MS-SLXV]?
1) Silverlight XAML Vocabulary: A list of XamlTypes (pp. 14-119) and XamlTextSyntaxes (pp. 120-132) that can be used in Silverlight XAML documents. (you can think of this as the XAML Schema for Silverlight)
2) A list of any exceptions from [MS-XAML] XAML Object Mapping Specification 2006 that currently apply to Silverlight XAML documents. (pp. 10-13)
How does this relate to [MS-XAML] and [MS-WPFXV]?
In March 2008, we shipped a v0.1 version of [MS-XAML] XAML Object Mapping Specification 2006 and [MS-WPFXV] WPF XAML Vocabulary Specification 2006, and we shipped v1.0 in June 2008. You can think of [MS-XAML] as the specification of the XAML Language and [MS-WPFXV] as the WPF XAML Schema.
Most of [MS-SLXV] is a subset of what is specified in [MS-WPFXV].
What is next for [MS-SLXV]?
Our goal is to ship a v1.0 of [MS-SLXV] in the next 90-180 days. We’d love to hear of any issues you find to ensure we can make it as complete as possible.
Happy tagging!