...Removing All Doubt

Fundamentally XAML is an object initialization language. It creates object and sets values to properties. XAML, however, is not limit to creating reference types. You can also create instances of any type that has an associated type converter. For example, XAML can create an instance of a brush with the following code,

  <Brush>Red</Brush>

which creates a red solid color brush by calling the type converter associated with Brush. This means that,

  <Button>
    <Button.Background>
      <Brush>Red</Brush>
    <Button.Background>
  </Button>

is equivilent to,

  <Button Background="Red" />

XAML can be used to create value types, such as an integer, through its type converter as in,

  <s:Int32>27</s:Int32>

or a string,

  <s:String>It is the time for all good men...</s:String>

by using string's type converter. Note that XAML always refers to the CLR name for the type, not a language specific name such as "int" in C# or "Integer" in Pascal. Both of these types refer to the System.Int32 class in the CLR and XAML uses the CLR name, Int32. Note also that neither the XAML nor the WPF (Avalon) namespaces refer to the System namespace in mscorlib.dll where these types live. This mean that somewhere in the document you need to declare the prefix. This might look something like:

  <?Mapping ClrNamespace="System" XmlNamespace="System" 
  Assembly="mscorlib"?>
  <Window
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005"
    xmlns:s="System">
      <Button>
        <s:String>It is the time for all good men...</s:String>
      </Button>
  </Window>

Of course, for string, it is easier to write it,

  <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005">
    <Button>It is the time for all good men...</Button>
  </Window>

but the string for is useful when you want multiple strings in a collection, say, for example, as the content of a list box,

  <?Mapping ClrNamespace="System" XmlNamespace="System" 
  Assembly="mscorlib"?>
  <Window
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005"
    xmlns:s="System">
      <ListBox>
        <s:String>It is the time for all good men...</s:String>
        <s:String>to come to the aid of their country.</s:String>
      </ListBox>
  </Window>

Note that if this had been written,

  <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005">
    <ListBox>
      It is the time for all good men...
      to come to the aid of their country.
    </ListBox>
  </Window>

the list box would only contain one string, not two. This is because all continuous text content is considered one string and not two. If you load this in WPF you will also notice that the string get treated as "It is time for all good men... to come to the aid of their country" where the spaces and line breaks have been collapsed. I will discuss the rules for whitespace normalization (collapsing) in a subsequent post. For now, if you are familiar with HTML, what XAML does shouldn't come as any surprise.