XAML and designer-specific layout information

Don,

"Beside file" approaches doen't work for most ISVs creating commercial workflow design applications.

A "beside file" approach may work well for a product like Visual Studio but a single integrated file solution is needed for many (most?) other types of applications.

What if a Word document was physically 2 files instead of one? Think of the mess it would create.

(I'm aware of the zip-it-all-in-one-file approach that Office "12" is planning to use and the CAB files used, for example, in InfoPath 2003 XSN files and WSS STP files.)

Cheers,
Michael.

p.s. ITFOT (in the fullness of time), a majority of people using the WWF design surface will use it hosted in a custom application (and not Visual Studio or a related tool).

Michael,

I agree that embedding the designer is a big deal and that those scenarios may overtake the VS ones perhaps even before there's a V2.

I also agree that having a single-file solution solves a lot of managability problems.

I do wonder, however, whether J. Random ISV wants to use a WF-centric XAML file in the raw or whether the XAML data gets embedded into some larger ISV-specific file format.

Word's relationship to VBA is a great example of this. Word owns the top-level file format (.doc) and simply embeds the VBA-isms into its file format in a fairly opaque way.

DB

Re: WF-centric XAML file in the raw or whether the XAML data gets embedded into some larger ISV-specific file format

I don't think this approach will be acceptable because what one really wants to do is things like "Extend the native (beta 1) XOML/XAML class to add a Rectangle property to store the location of the activity on the designer".

I want to have something like partial classes for adding new features to the MS supplied classes. (e.g. add a persisted Location property to a State activity class that is specific to my custom designer application, for example). (This approach is preferred over the WinFS approach of having to create and query separate Item Extensions.)

Net.Net: I don't want to have to flip through different sections of the serialized XML file (or worse, file*s*) to find the information I need about a single instance of a State activity class.

Michael.

As a follow-up, we've also be working with WWF rulesets and rules (aka WWF Policies) ...and of course, how they are serialized.

Again, from the perspective/persona of a business analyst trying to understand a WWF workflow, it makes no sense for WWF to persist a set of business rules using the internal CodeDOM object model (within a XOML file).

Virtually impossible to transform into anything meaningful to a business analyst ...and another situation where we're forced to roll our own XML schema and serializaion solution for business rules instead of using Microsoft's.

Michael Herman
Parallelspace Corporation

One of the benefits of partial class was to split up the code from the designer.
Now do we add all the layout into one XAML and then split it up in the next release. :)
Why repeat ?

Sajay, I'm not sure I understand your comment?

Michael.

How do we create Xaml/Xoml with the help of DOT NET API's or assemblies.
As we drop the activity the Xoml code gets generated.....what are the classes and API's it uses to create xoml internally ?