WANT TO host Visual Studio Form Designer in my own application..

Question

Hi,

I'm writing an application that lets the end use design a Form just the way Visual Studio lets you design a windows forms. I looked into visual studio forms designer articles in msdn and also studied open-source SharpDevelop editor. Both the examples host visual studio's windows forms designer to provide form-design service in their respective applications.

My question is - Does it imply any licensing issue with Microsoft for directly hosting their Visual Studio Forms designer in my own application ? I don't want move ahead without proper and correct information.

Can anybody here help me out if there's any licensing issues in case I want to host visual studio windows fomr designer in my own application.

If there's any such licensing implication - then how does Sharp-Develop do this ?

Answer 1

I spoke Jason - GM VS Team and received a favourable response to what I was looking for. I'd rather share my interesting conversation with him than to explain everything. Please excuse me for removing email-ids for spam-preventions.

From: Ruchit Surati [me]
Sent: 07 April 2010 00:38
To: 'Jason Zander'
Cc: 'Jeff Beehler'
Subject: RE: (Jason Zander's WebLog) : WANT TO host Visual Studio Form Designer in my own application..

Thanks Jason,

You made my day!

I strongly recommend, MSDN should put some more focus on DesignSurface detailing with examples – DesignSurface is a great potential for developers that is hardly known and it definitely needs a loud noise.

Ruchit.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Zander
Sent: 06 April 2010 23:38
To: me Cc: Jeff Beehler
Subject: RE: (Jason Zander's WebLog) : WANT TO host Visual Studio Form Designer in my own application..

Hi Ruchit - DesignSurface is in the System.ComponentModel namespace of the .NET Framework. The licensing is for the .NET redistributable is here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994405.aspx)

Because it is part of .NET, you can freely use it anywhere Microsoft makes .NET available, just have your application install the framework to the machine and go!

Let us know if you have any questions

Thanks, Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: me
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 3:59 AM
To: Jason Zander
Subject: (Jason Zander's WebLog) : WANT TO host Visual Studio Form Designer in my own application..
Importance: High

Hi Jason,

I'm writing an application that involved a visual forms designer. After a lot of research I found that .Net 2.0 comes with DesignerSurface implementation that one can use in their application. I have created samples and prototypes based on information available on MSDN and I have been quite successful doing so.

But I have a query regarding licensing policies for using DesignSurface infrastructure in my own application. Can you please tell me If using DesignSurface in my own application has any licensing implications?

I have asked a question on StackOverflow.com and the responses seem positive. Can you please shed some light on this in order to help me out with right direction ?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2460609/want-to-host-visual-studio-form-designer-in-my-own-application

Ruchit. - A .Net Developer.

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