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Rob Relyea - XAMLified

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@mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?

This twitter conversation happened the other day between mstrobel and myself: (read top to bottom).

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Interesting question and comments. I’m eager, also, to ensure that Silverlight & WP7 both use XAML to its fullest. I’m reading Mike’s comments as:

  • He wants to use Mono/Monotouch + XAML for IPhone development.
  • He wants fuller support of XAML on Silverlight, including WP7. I imagine his top request is for XamlWriter.Save() support in Silverlight, including on WP7.
If you read his last blog post “Application Settings and WPF Applications”, you’ll see he is excited about Xaml for Config.

Love to hear feedback around these ideas…

Where will System.Xaml.dll be available? How much will Silverlight XAML get better?

Now, I’ve gotten requests for System.Xaml.dll to have support for .NET 3.5, Silverlight, .NET CF, and Mono. Right now, .NET 4 is the only planned release of System.Xaml.dll, but we’ll listen to your scenarios and feedback. I’d imagine that Silverlight and Silverlight on WP7 will both get additional XAML support, based on feedback and customer scenarios, as those releases iterate.

I’m very happy with our progress in Silverlight 4 that I commented on with “Silverlight 4 XAML Parser Overhaul”, and that David Poll and Jeff Wilcox blogged on in more detail.

Keep feedback coming, like the feedback that you listed back on “Silverlight XAML Developer Experience Issues?”

Published Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:21 PM by Rob_Relyea
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Comments

# Dew Drop – April 8, 2010 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew@ Thursday, April 08, 2010 9:14 AM

Pingback from  Dew Drop – April 8, 2010 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

by Dew Drop – April 8, 2010 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

# re: @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?@ Thursday, April 08, 2010 10:45 AM

Hey Rob, I'm thrilled that you're giving my questions so much attention :).  It's more than XamlWriter.Save()--I would like to see the new Xaml schema/object model, attached member support, markup extensions, and everything else available in other platforms as well.

I would love to use Xaml for transporting dynamic (as in metadata-driven) entities, which would require using some of the new parser extension points in .NET 4.  Unfortunately, we won't be moving to .NET 4 for several months, and it would be nice to have those facilities available in .NET 3.5 too.

On the hobby side, I'm developing an open-source game using Xaml as the persistence format for game data.  I'm interested in potentially porting a variant of the game to the iPad (and maybe the iPhone) via MonoTouch, and it would be great if System.Xaml worked on Mono.  Maybe it does--I haven't tried it.  But open sourcing it would be even better.  I think Microsoft's recent forays into open-sourced APIs was a great move, and I strongly encourage it.  I see no reason why all new .NET "sub-frameworks" shouldn't be open sourced, like MEF and ASP.NET MVC.

by mike.strobel

# re: @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?@ Friday, April 09, 2010 1:08 AM

Mike-

Thanks for all the great feedback.

About your question.

Unknown members, of any sort, will generally cause XAML -> Object Graph to fail. There are 2 main ways to deal with that.

1) markup compatibility (mc:Ignorable) ... this will tell other processors it is ok to ignore items from an xmlns prefix, if the namespace is "not known by the processor" (assembly isn't loaded/available).

2) you could always write custom node loops to filter out unknown things.  #1 is more elegant, as it works in any XAML processor...

Thanks, Rob

by Rob_Relyea

# Twitter Trackbacks for @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight? - Rob Relyea - XAMLified [windowsclient.net] on Topsy.com@ Friday, April 09, 2010 1:23 AM

Pingback from  Twitter Trackbacks for                 @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight? - Rob Relyea - XAMLified         [windowsclient.net]        on Topsy.com

by Twitter Trackbacks for @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight? - Rob Relyea - XAMLified [windowsclient.net] on Topsy.com

# re: @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?@ Friday, April 09, 2010 12:32 PM

Hey Rob, thanks for the reply!  Regarding mc:Ignorable, it seems like this would be the obvious choice for hand-written Xaml, but what about Xaml that's written and read by XamlServices?  Is there an API for setting ignorable namespaces when saving Xaml?

We can take the issue of application configuration as a use case.  Let's say multiple app modules add their own settings via attached properties.  It seems to me that I would need to post-process the resulting Xaml to determine which namespaces have been imported by the modules, and then mark them as ignorable.  I'm not sure how to go about this.  Can you offer up some pointers?

Cheers,

Mike

by mike.strobel

# re: @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?@ Sunday, April 11, 2010 3:09 AM

+1 with respect to System.Xaml.dll support for Mono. We are already:

a) using XAML as a config serialization mechanism for DotNet 3.5 based applications.

b) Working with Mono and MonoTouch and would prefer consistent APIs

The extensibility offered in the DotNet 4.0 XAML API is going to be very welcome. We will likely move to 4.0 baring third party library backward compatibility issues.

by Apolon Ivankovic

# Windows Client Developer Roundup for 4/12/2010@ Monday, April 12, 2010 4:35 AM

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #19. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information

by Microsoft Weblogs

# Windows Client Developer Roundup for 4/12/2010@ Monday, April 12, 2010 4:35 AM

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #19. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information

by Community Blogs

# re: @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?@ Monday, April 12, 2010 1:12 PM

What we are waiting for is the full WPF support on Mono... Our software is 100% .NET and we would like to keep it. .Net is really the best platform for development and we hope to continue with it. WPF will be great on Mono :-)

by pl01

# re: @mstrobel: System.Xaml.dll available on Mono? More XAML support on Silverlight?@ Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:34 AM

@pl01 I too would like to see WPF on Mono, but the Mono team has stated that they have no plans for a full WPF implementation.  It would simply be too massive an undertaking for the manpower they have available.  However, they have also stated that they would be more than happy to host a WPF implementation if someone was willing to take on the project.  If you are interested in working to port WPF to Mono, perhaps we could try to recruit some more developers and get the project going.

by mike.strobel

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