q1:Why implement an opensource WPF engine, and not use WPF itself ?
The reason i'm implementing my own WPF engine is that we simply run
into problems which we cannot fix since Microsoft's WPF is closed source
q2:Are you reverse engineering WPF using tools like reflector ?
No. Microsofts code is copyright so we cannot use reflector to 'copy'
their code. Besides that, if you use reflector you will see that all
the interesting WPF parts are implemented in native code (milcore.dll)
so its impossible to read let alone copy those parts
q3:How compatible will the new WPF engine be with Microsofts xaml ?
We're aiming at 100% compatibility. At the moment our WPF engine can read & parse files which are 99% the same as Microsofts xaml
By aiming at 100% people will be able to use all xaml tools available like for example Microsoft Expression blend
q4:Will the new WPF engine support everything of WPF ?
Probably not. The reason is that we dont need all the stuff WPF
provides in MediaPortal. But since its opensource we can always add
'missing' things later on.
Current state:
The last couple of weeks we made really nice progress. We're now at a point where we can parse & render most xaml files.
Things like events, storyboards, resources, shapes, buttons etc all work
Our next big tasks consist of adding (data)binding support and some more advanced controls like the listview & treeview
Here's a screenshot which shows the use of:
- styled buttons,
- panels like StackPanel, GridPanel and Canvas
- RadialGradientBrush & LinearGradientBrush
- Storyboard & events & triggers
- Shapes like Path, Polygon, Rectangle and Ellipse
Screenshot:
Since this is a screenshot, you wont see the animations :-(
And if you are interested in the .xaml files used to render this you can take a look in SVN here
If you want you can play with the current WPF engine.
Todo this you will need to get the sourcecode from SVN and compile MP-II yourself. So.. this is for developers only
The WPF engine is disabled by default since its work-in-progress.
To enable it, open up skinengine/WindowManagement/window.cs
and un-comment the first line so it looks like: #define TESTXAML
Now compile MP-II (make sure to set the platform from Any Cpu to x86)
and run it.. Mp-II will now open & render the skin/default/test.xml
which will show the above picture.
I assume you know that XAML (with all it's data binding, etc.) is completely apart from WPF.You don't need to implement your own XAML to put a WPF engine on top of it.Even most WPF classes are GUI-Less.This is even true for controls like TreeViews which are composed of low level elements, so if you wanted to render everything by your own,you would only have to provide a style to the control which doesn't use WPF but your own engine - no need to re-implement everything. BTW: The new 3.5 SP1 Framework allows to directly integrate direct3D content into WPF - may this fix your original problem?
This looks very impressive, from what you are saying there might be a way to use pre-rendered movies as transitions for parts of the interface. This opens a whole new world of design for skin artists.
