Extended MCML Schema

If you have developed user interfaces for Media Center in Windows Vista using MCML and Visual Studio 2005 you probably have noticed that even with the corresponding SDK installed "Intellisense" ability is lost once you have gone too deep into the intricacies of MCML syntax. This also provokes several sections are marked as invalid by the syntax verifier even when they run perfectly when tested with the rendering engine.

During the past weekend I started researching for the cause of this issue and how to solve it. I already knew XML-based files were verified using an XML schema installed as an add-on to Visual Studio, however, I didn't know where those files live and was somewhat uncertain what the actual structure of the file would be.

After a couple of Internet searches I found out the folder:

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Xml\Schemas

A quick look on it took me to the file "mcml2006.xsd" which is editable from Visual Studio.

After several tries I was able to introduce the first change, which was adding an "Animation" as a valid entry in a "PropertySet". From there everything else was relatively simple and I ended up adding several other entries that I knew were valid but not accepted by the syntax verifier or had Intellisense support.

The result can be downloaded from here:

http://www.murven.com/archive/mcml2006.zip

For installation simply uncompress and copy to:

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Xml\Schemas

Please send your comments and questions and let me know if I left any important entry out of it.

*****UPDATE*******

After writing markup for several days I noticed there were several other missing entries (Including the requested ). You can download the new update from here:

http://www.murven.com/archive/mcml2006.zip