The "UI App" is currently a 2.0 WinForm app, but moving to 3.0 requirement is not a problem.
In my mind, the XAML would be defined on the remote machine (using text editor, WYSIWYG editor, ?) and shipped *as text* across an existing pipe to the machine destined to show the UI. It's just a way of using standard XAML syntax in an effort to allow rich UI description. I'll define what is allowed/supported in the XAML, so dealing with unknown types used for acquiring data is not a problem. But the UI display program only needs to "know" about the controls used for harvesting user data. This is one of the most appealing things about using something like XAML (if I can). That 3D animation frame would be FINE since it is used to send info to the user, not harvest input, so I get that goodness for free as long as the XAML provided is self contained and/or valid. If I could easily(?) instantiate that XAML, show it to the user, then harvest results (via reflection?) to marshal back to the remote machine, that would be spot on. I've looked at Blend and many other links at MS and beyond, which is part of why I'm interested in this course. But I haven't spent enough time with XAML (just poked at it really) and 3.0 System.Windows (nor found any sample code, article, or KB info) to know quite how to go about what I want, or even if it's reasonable. And I need to choose a direction relatively soon with minimal time to have a more functional proof of concept working. Hence, my initial question. Russ -----Original Message----- From: Discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Lee Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 1:54 PM To: ADVANCED-DOTNET@DISCUSS.DEVELOP.COM Subject: Re: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Dynamic remote UI - XAML? Russ, Where XAML would benefit you in this situation (as far as I can tell) would only be if you were going to create a WPF app that dynamically loads the XAML file to build its UI. Your "Creator" process would need to create the XAML, or change portions of a master file. If you are not going to use WPF then XAML may be overkill, unless you need, or plan on implementing all of the objects that XAML can represent (d3 animation frames, time slices, video objects, vectors etc). I think that a dynamic UI engine that reads a standard XML or some binary file would be better suited to what you need to do. I have done this on a lesser scale with control files, and dynamic control creation in VB6 for an in house editing utility, allowing for the addition of new editing screens, and files without having to get me involved. You could download Expression Blend (http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/download.aspx?key=blend2previe w) if you want to get an idea of what XAML output looks like. You might also want to check out these links. http://blogs.msdn.com/bethmassi/archive/2007/07/17/an-example-of-dynamic-pro gramming-in-vb.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/bethmassi/archive/2007/07/18/making-our-code-more-dyna mic.aspx HTH, Rob -----Original Message----- From: Discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russ Alan Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 3:24 PM To: ADVANCED-DOTNET@DISCUSS.DEVELOP.COM Subject: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Dynamic remote UI - XAML? I have an unusual requirement that seems to be a good fit for XAML. But, not having much experience with XAML, I'm not sure how to proceed and don't even have the basis for searching out references without (committing more time than I have available). In a nutshell, without going into NDA territory, I have a need to express somewhat arbitrary UI metadata from a binary running on one machine, display it on a different machine in a running process (not browser) for user interaction, harvest the results, and ship the results back the originating machine. I've considered several different ways, including an embedded browser. But the remote machine is not a web server and I don't want to deal with reimplementing or hosting ASP, nor do I want to "roll my own". What I *think* I would like to do, is describe the UI in XAML, instantiate the form, and harvest the results. But in several searches I've found no information about doing this. Rather than spend more time digging, looking for something that may not be reasonable, I thought I would ask if anyone has done this or seen anything that would help narrow down my search. Am I barking up the wrong tree? Russ =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor. http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor. http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
