Mono 2.0 the open source .NET framework has been released.  Mono has made it’s way into many great systems by now from websites to even 3d engines such as Unity3D. It is great to have a toolkit that is powerful, has a great language set from C# to Boo and that is available on multiple platforms.  From Windows, to *nix to of course Mac OSX built on unix, it all just works.

Having 2.0 solid and complete is a great step to making production apps run off of it.

Microsoft Compatible APIs

• ADO.NET 2.0 API for accessing databases.

• ASP.NET 2.0 API for developing Web-based applications.

• Windows.Forms 2.0 API to create desktop applications.

• System.XML 2.0: An API to manipulate XML documents.

• System.Core: Provides support for the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).

• System.Xml.Linq: Provides a LINQ provider for XML.

• System.Drawing 2.0 API: A portable graphics rendering API.

Mono APIs

• Gtk# 2.12: A binding to the Gtk+ 2.12 and GNOME libraries for creating desktop applications on Linux, Windows and MacOS X.
• Mono.Cecil: A library to manipulate ECMA CLI files (the native format used for executables and libraries).
• Mono.Cairo: A binding to the Cairo Graphics library to produce 2D graphics and render them into a variety of forms (images, windows, postscript and PDF).
• Mono’s SQLite support: a library to create and consume databases created with SQLite.
• Mono.Posix: a library to access Linux and Unix specific functionality from your managed application. With both a low-level interface as well as higher level interfaces.

Third Party APIs bundled with Mono

• Extensive support for databases: PostgresSQL, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQL server, SQLite and Firebird.
• C5 Generics Library: we are bundling the C5 generics collection class library as part of Mono.

Compilers

These compilers are part of the Mono 2.0 release:

• C# 3.0 compiler implementation, with full support for LINQ.
• Visual Basic 8 compiler.
• IL assembler and disassembler and the development toolchain required to create libraries and applications.

Great news!  Mono has made it to .NET 3.0 support and this includes some of the latest stuff like LINQ expressions.

I am pleased to announce that Mono C# compiler (gmcs) has now full C# 3.0 support. Most of the features has been available since Mono 1.2.6 release. However, with the upcoming Mono 2.0 release we will also support complex LINQ expressions and mainly expression trees which is fairly overlooked new feature with a lot of potential.

For anyone interested in compiling and running this LukeH’s slightly extreme LINQ example I have good news. It compiles on Mono and it runs as fast as on .NET.

Is Microsoft going baseplane? Lots of people are going towards web based office in many ways, it is wise to release and allow people to export to these formats cleanly.

Microsoft Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt) File Formats

Published: February 15, 2008

The documents listed below are covered by the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.

Microsoft Word

Word 97-2007 Binary File Format (.doc) Specification PDF | XPS

Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint 97-2007 Binary File Format (.ppt) Specification PDF | XPS

Microsoft Excel

Excel 97-2007 Binary File Format (.xls) Specification PDF | XPS

Excel 2007 Binary File Format (.xlsb) Specification PDF | XPS

Office Drawing

Office Drawing 97-2007 Binary Format Specification PDF | XPS

Supporting Technologies

See Supporting Technologies

Yes you have reached the twilight zone… do-de-do-do.