Develop Reference

How to create .xsn (InfoPath) file programmatically

We have a 3rd party component that takes INPUT as an .xsn (InfoPath2007) file and gives a pre-determined output. It was all fine until one of our client decided not to use MS-InfoPath anymore and as such even our 3rd party component is not able to function as we are not able to create xsn files (which were created by a human-InfoPath user till now, until InfoPath was discontinued in their group)... so the challenge for us is to create these SIMPLE (textbox, dropdown, date-picker and check-radio-box controls) InfoPath like forms -- .XSN files programmatically. Is this possible? Are there any APIs or Object-model based functions that can be leveraged for this task. Our team is predominantly C# developers. Our current analysis reveals that files pertaining to manifest, XML, J-scripting parts of .XSN might be achievable after some careful coding... however XSL (part that is associated with layout) seems to be a big gamble. Any pointers on this subject will be greatly appreciated.
UPDATE (as the problem statement does not seem to clear yet):
We do not want to convert InfoPath form into any HTML or alike format.
NOW here, we need to create some simple (pre-determined control-types with their known data) InfoPath forms programatically in .xsn file format. We want this to be done programatically, because earlier it was being done by a human-client who no longer subscribes to InfoPath-license and hiring another human for doing this is ruled out for various HR-reasons. So this "programatically"created xsn-file is fed it into this 3rd party component. Then this 3rd party component reads through the various parts inside the xsn-input and manipulates on it, into an output custom-file-frmat such that the custom 'workflow-component' keeps working further ahead... so hope you get the bigger picture now. Now an xsn file is essentially a CAB file consisting of many parts-components like manifest, xsL, xsD, xmL, images, jScript etc. So now if I have a winforms or ASP.NET webform... is it possible to write some component (using InfoPath object model or APIs) which can read through the UI-controls of this winform and then come up with the essentials that need to go into xsL, xmL, manifest etc so as to "collectively get compressed" into an InfoPath form!!!

Yes it is possible to Automatically create InfoPath Template Forms. The XSN is nothing but a cabinet file (.CAB) having the extension renamed to .xsn.
To further understand what are the contents of CAB file and what do they do, please follow the link:
A beginner's guide to forms and form templates
Following are the links that shall help you further.
Microsoft Cabinet Software Development Kit
A relevant Q&A to open CAB through C# program

Custom PropertyGridEditor etc. for web part edit zone?

I want to change the appearance of the default editor parts, and am a little unsure of how to go about doing this, as there seems to be a surprising lack of documentation on the subject.
I've been able to create a custom declarative catalog with some trial and error and overriding the RenderCatalogPart method, and now wish to do something similar with my AppearanceEditor and PropertyGridEditor. I've tried just changing the style of the editor parts using CSS, but they are already arranged into tables which are impossible to get rid of. It's not even possible to just take the class as is, because the classes are sealed. So I'm basically stuck with having to write my own from scratch, I guess the questions are as follows:
1) How do I go about getting the information on the controls I need to render?
2) According to the documentation, I need to override the ApplyChagnes and SyncChanges methods - but I can't find any information on what I actually need to put in these methods.
3) On a similar note, is it possible to change the layout of the EditorPart itself, so that the AppearanceEditor, BehaviourEditor etc. are displayed side-by-side instead of on top of eachother?
4) Is there any way to have the page catalog displayed somewhere on the page, even in browse mode? I'd quite like to use it as a 'minimised' area, where users can send web parts they don't want immediately. At the moment they go back into the page catalog and users tend to just add a new part instead. I know that I can have multiple catalog zones on the page, which is great, but it only shows up in catalog mode.
Any help would be very much appreciated.

I didn't get any replies here, but I was able to figure out a way to do some of these.
In the end I decided to use reflection to get each public property on the web part that was WebBrowsable, and figure out what sort of control to display from the type.
The ApplyChanges() and SyncChanges() methods essentially just persist the changes from the page to the personalization blob and vice-versa. It's a matter of rendering some controls on the page, and mapping the values to the properties of the web part in these methods.
I don't think this is possible without writing your own.
Haven't been able to do this, but I don't imagine that it's possible sadly.

How to create a help file

I want to create a help file opens when pressed F1 anytime. How to create it and include to code?

You are asking two things which are separate issues:
Create a help file.
This can be tricky depending on how you do it. There are many different options, some launch a web browser to a online help while others launch a help viewer of some kind. I have also seen people having simple help viewer implemented in simple controls like some kind of browser control or rich text viewer. To create a external file (like a *.chm file) I would use a commercial package like robohelp, there are SDKs from Microsoft, but packages like RoboHelp makes lift so much easier.
Launch the help
To get the help to be displayed you normally (in the case of an *.chm file or an web browser) need to launch the viewer program. The help SDK from Microsoft contains help for this, but you may also just lauch the program as any other program. Take a look at the System.Diagnostics.Process class.

If you want to create a CHM help file you may check out HelpNDoc which is a perfect tool to create PDF,HTML and CHMs instantly. If it comes to launching, mrz is also perfectly right.

There is a help SDK that microsoft provides
check it out:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms670169
Im assuming this is what your looking for?
you could set F1 to one of these HTML pages?

If your program is rather simple, a single HTML file opened in the user's default browser should be ok. But if Your application is a bit more complex, there's no real alternative to a chm file.
You might also include a PDF which describes common use-cases. (Like a book about using your software)

You can create your help in HTML format and for viewing, you can create a Form which has an embedded browser in it, and load the index (or whatever you call the first page) in the browser.

Do you know of a free .Net component for visual flow model graph design and editing?

An app (C#4, WinForms, Entity Framework, SQL Server 2008) of mine maintains a graph of interconnected objects, each having some simple member fields and a set of many directed (in and out) one-to-one links to other objects.
I'd like to offer a user an ability to view and edit this graph visually some way, creating and removing connections, modifying objects attributes values and introducing/dropping objects.
I suppose there has to be a framework (at list a primitive kind of) for this as visual model design tools are pretty common to meet. Do you know one?

A few years ago I collaborated with a project that used this kind of tool to build parsing software for education. The tool that was used was Graphviz, in special dot and dotty. If you don't know what is it, then this is a short description about it:
Graphviz is open source graph
visualization software. It has several
main graph layout programs.
The Graphviz layout programs take
descriptions of graphs in a simple
text language, and make diagrams in
several useful formats such as images
and SVG for web pages, Postscript for
inclusion in PDF or other documents;
or display in an interactive graph
browser. (Graphviz also supports GXL,
an XML dialect.)
Graphviz has many useful features for
concrete diagrams, such as options for
colors, fonts, tabular node layouts,
line styles, hyperlinks, and custom
shapes.
This is an example of the kind of graphs that were built:
(source: ucse.edu.ar)
You should note that this is not a native .NET tool, but of course, you can use it anyway.

This answer might come a little late, but Microsoft has its own .Net library called Microsoft Automated Graph Layout (MSAGL) which looks (at least visually) suspiciously similar to GraphViz, or, DOT in particular. Its name has changed over time as it has been developed in MS Labs/MS Research.
According to the product page, it contains three modules:
Graphing module Microsoft.MSAGL.dll,
Drawing module Microsoft.MSAGL.Drawing.dll, and
Viewer control Microsoft.MSAGL.GraphViewerGDIGraph.dll that seems to be a Windows Forms custom control.
This software used to be free a long time ago, but, unfortunately, it has made it into a paid product.

How do I build a diagramming application in .NET?

I want to write a GUI seating application that allows users to draw and annotate simple "maps" of seating areas.
The end result would probably look something a little like Visio, but specifically for manipulating my "seating" data model rather than producing files.
In Java-land, there's the Graphical Editing Framework (GEF) -- is there anything like this in the .NET space? Should I just use System.Drawing.Drawing2D primitives and handle it all myself?

Here is product from Nevron. It is paid but doing it all yourself will take lot of time and effort.
Open Diagram and EasyDiagram.net are available at Codeplex. Be sure to download and look into their code.

There is Netron Library for diagramming. It is open source and uses GDI+.

Check out NShape. It is an open source diagramming framework written in C# and quite powerful. Its controls are WinForms controls but you can also use it for WPF.

You might consider using the DSL Toolkit from the Visual Studio SDK. It allows you to create a graphical DSL designer by first creating a domain model, and then creating the graphical notation that will allow users to create or edit instances of that model.
You may very well be able to create a graphical notation that looks like a seating area. This would allow your users to not only "diagram", but to produce a file containing a filled-in domain model of what was diagrammed.

Check out our MetaDraw component - www.MetaDraw.com
MetaDraw is designed to make applications like this easy.
MetaDraw will support a background image and an annotation layer
You can put users into a variety of editing modes - Lines, Curves, Text, Shapes, etc.
Every drawn element is distinct - just like in Visio, so you can allow users to select objects and move them around or resize them. Every object can have multiple hidden tags ( like seat numbers or database record pointers ). You can recognize which objects users select ( for instance take some action when user clicks seat 22 ) . You can dynamically modify propertie by code - such as searching for seat 22 and changing it's fill color. Of course you can also scroll, zoom, print, save to a variety of formats and more.