how to make use of Text Services Framework into .net application

Question

hi i want to make use of Com intefaces into my .net application, but this is related to Text Services Framework and i reasearched on this and it was like it only supports COM servers can anyone help me on this can i use TSF intefaces into my .net application and if yes Please tell me how to do it plzzzzzz :) thanks

Answer 1

Hey I have the same problem, I am evaluating if i really have to use C++ for doing the job. You can of course create a COM Server in any COM compatible environment, so also in .NET. I am by far not in any usable state, but I can tell you what I did so far. First, the msctf.dll only has a header and an IDL file (in Windows SDK 7.0), which has to be modified such that you get a type library (tlb). I used the tlbimp2 from codeplex, it has an xml based rewriting mechanism (that eases the heavy use of pointers in the type library: Here is my batch file

set sdk7=C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0
set imported=msctf

rem call "%sdk7%\Bin\SetEnv.cmd"
midl "%sdk7%\Include\%imported%.idl"
rem i copied the tlbimp2 into the sdk bin
tlbimp2 /keyfile:TextService.snk %imported%.tlb /config:msctf.xml
rem tlbimp /keyfile:TextService.snk %imported%.tlb

rem not sure about this
gacutil /u %imported%
gacutil /i %imported%.dll

And here my XML rule file (to be expanded of course) http://clrinterop.codeplex.com/

<Rules>
  <Rule Name="addlangprofile string 1" Category="Signature">
    <Condition>
      <And>
        <NativeParentFunctionName Operator="Equal" Value="AddLanguageProfile" />
        <NativeParameterIndex Operator="Equal" Value="4" />
      </And>
    </Condition>
    <Action Name="ConvertTo">
      <Parameter Key="Direction" Value="[In]" />
      <Parameter Key="ByRef" Value="False" />
      <Parameter Key="ManagedType" Value="LPArray" />
      <Parameter Key="MarshalAs" Value="(default)" />
      <Parameter Key="Attributes" Value="[SizeParamIndexOffset=+1]" />
    </Action>
  </Rule>
  <Rule Name="addlanguageprofile string2" Category="Signature">
    <Condition>
      <And>
        <NativeParentFunctionName Operator="Equal" Value="AddLanguageProfile" />
        <NativeParameterIndex Operator="Equal" Value="6" />
      </And>
     </Condition>
     <Action Name="ConvertTo">
       <Parameter Key="Direction" Value="[In]" />
       <Parameter Key="ByRef" Value="False" />
       <Parameter Key="ManagedType" Value="LPArray" />
       <Parameter Key="MarshalAs" Value="(default)" />
       <Parameter Key="Attributes" Value="[SizeParamIndexOffset=+1]" />
     </Action>
   </Rule>
   <Rule Name="GUID" Category="Type">
     <Condition>
       <And>
         <NativeName Operator="Equal" Value="GUID" />
       </And>
     </Condition>
     <Action Name="ResolveTo">
       <Parameter Key="AssemblyName" Value="mscorlib" />
       <Parameter Key="ManagedTypeFullName" Value="System.Guid" />
     </Action>
   </Rule>
</Rules>

Then I was trying to wrap the interfaces to be more .NET friendly:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Globalization;

using MSCTF;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace TextService
{
    public class LanguageProfiles
    {
        private ITfInputProcessorProfiles instance;

        public LanguageProfiles()
        {
            instance = new COMIFace<ITfInputProcessorProfiles>().CreateInstance();
        }

        public CultureInfo CurrentLanguage
        {
            get
            {
                ushort plangid;
                instance.GetCurrentLanguage(out plangid);
                return CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo(plangid);
            }
            set
            {
                instance.ChangeCurrentLanguage((ushort) value.LCID);
            }
        }

        public IEnumerable<TF_LANGUAGEPROFILE> ProfilesOfLanguage(CultureInfo culture)
        {
            IEnumTfLanguageProfiles ppenum;
            instance.EnumLanguageProfiles( (ushort) culture.LCID, out ppenum);

            TF_LANGUAGEPROFILE profile;
            uint fetch;
            do
            {
                ppenum.Next(1, out profile, out fetch);
                yield return profile;
            } while (fetch == 1 && profile.fActive != -1);
        }

        public void Register(ref Guid rclsid)
        {
            instance.Register(ref rclsid);
        }

        public void Unregister(ref Guid rclsid)
        {
            instance.Unregister(ref rclsid);
        }

        public void Add(ref Guid rclsid, CultureInfo info, string name, string icon)
        {
            var empty = Guid.Empty;
            instance.AddLanguageProfile(ref empty, (ushort)info.LCID, ref rclsid, name.ToUShortArray(), name.ULength(), icon.ToUShortArray(), icon.ULength(), 0);
        }

        public void Remove(ref Guid rclsid, CultureInfo info)
        {
            instance.RemoveLanguageProfile(ref rclsid, (ushort)info.LCID, ref rclsid);
        }
    }
}

The COMIFace class is just a helper to fest the IIDs from registry, as I only found them in the .c file generated with the IDL compiler. Better would be to parse that file I think, but this works fine too. The given class works fine, I can register the service with following batch (and regasm enabled in the C# project options

set outtype=Debug
set asmname=TextService
cd bin\%outtype%
gacutil /u %asmname%
gacutil /i %asmname%.dll
cd ..\..

The problem I had is with all this that its a huge effort and there are many issues that are not worth the pain i think. I am not sure and wish anybody had some guidance. A point is, one always needs to follow some great site like this: TSF Aware blog but then u can write it in C++ anyways. One option might be C++/CLR, doing all the COM stuff and registration in C++ and the logic in C#, possible I guess

A here is some test code which shows it basically works:

var profiles = new LanguageProfiles();

var ko_KR = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("ko-KR");

foreach (var profile in profiles.ProfilesOfLanguage(ko_KR))
{
    Console.WriteLine("clsid: " + profile.clsid + " lid: " + CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo(profile.langid) + " catid: " + profile.catid + " active: " + profile.fActive + " guidProf: " + profile.guidProfile);
    var id = profile.clsid;
}