Metatool for automatic xml code generation

Question

I want to develop a programming tool for developers which can do automatic xml code generation for specifying a GUI design and its controls. The aim is to allow non-programmers specify GUI controls(which in this case perform higher level task unlike WinForms ) from a GUI. So the xml code generated is essentially an internal representation which programmers can understand and further use in any automatic GUI generator.

So the workflow is GUI(computer-novices)->xml(for programmers)->GUI(computer-novices).
Is there a Microsoft project similar to this?

Answer 1

Is there a Microsoft project similar to this?

Expression Blend -> XAML -> Visual Studio

Answer 2

It sounds like you should create a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to describe the problem domain of a GUI. Then have your tool consume instances of this DSL to generate the code.

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In writing this answer, I was thinking of the capabilities of the Domain-Specific Language Tools from Microsoft, part of the Visual Studio SDK. They allow you to create DSL and a graphical designer that can be used to create instance documents. The instance documents are in XML, with a schema produced by the DSL tools.

The toolkit is precisely targeted to a framework that will consume instance documents and use the to generate code or other text-based artifacts as part of a Visual Studio project.

An example of its use is the Web Service Software Factory, which combines three of these DSLs to generate the service contract, data contract, and hosting configuration for WCF services.