3 Overview

Xaml, the eXtensible Application Markup Language, is a system for representing structured information. This specification defines two abstract information models: the Xaml Schema Information Set model, and the Xaml Information Set model. The Xaml Information Set ('Xaml Infoset' for short) defines the structure of information that a Xaml instance can represent. The Xaml Schema Information Set allows specific Xaml vocabularies to be defined. This specification also defines a set of rules for transforming an XML document into a Xaml Information Set.

XML is a common format for Xaml. (The term "Xaml Document" refers to an XML document that represents a Xaml Information Set.) But while this specification does not define any other representations, any physical representation may be used as long as it can represent the information in the Xaml Information Set.

This first section of the specification describes the roles of the information sets, how they relate to applications that use Xaml, and how the transformation rules come into play.