Manifest Report
Manifest Maker does not provide manifest reports. We have received requests to add a 'manifest overview' report. As of this writing there are no plans to add this feature to Manifest Maker itself but, since a manifest is a well-formed XML file, it is relatively easy to create a report using an XSLT transformation.
To get you started we created a generic manifest report which you can copy and use as-is or modify to your needs. The sample report is intended for printing on a laser printer in landscape mode so it is strictly black and white (and grey) and quite wide. Feel free to add your own pizzazz. If you do not see the various shades of grey your monitor may not be calibrated right. But do not worry, they will print corerctly.
To use this example directly follow these steps:
- Download the XSL file: manifest-report.xsl.
- Download the example VB script. To avoid security issues it is renamed to 'xsl.vbs.txt'. Change the name back after download.
- Execute this command line:
CScript xsl.vbs manifest-report.xsl your.manifest your.html
Your command windows should now show something like this:
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.7 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Input XSL: manifest-report.xsl Input XML: C:\Program Files\Maze Computer\Manifest Maker\Examples\IIS6\sxs1\Maze.IIS6 Test.1 Output to: iis-example.htm File size: 3034 characters.
Keep in mind that MSXML opens XML files for read/write so you may get an access denied error if the file is read-only. Just make a copy of the file before running a report.
Some example reports
- Microsoft MSXML2 manifest. (click to open...)
- Illustrates a very typical COM component: a number of COM classes and their prog-id's.
- Microsoft Visual C++ runtime version 6. (click to open...)
- Similar case but some COM classes have no associated prog-id's.
- Example manifest from the tutorial. (click to open...)
- Manifest from the IIS6 example, adds a private COM interface proxy.
This manifest is normally in C:\Program Files\Maze Computer\Manifest Maker\Examples\IIS6\sxs1\Maze.IIS6 Test.1. - Microsoft Windows Common Controls version 6. (click to open...)
- Common controls only have window classes and no COM.
Manifest namespaces
The standard namespace for Win32 Manifests is urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1. Soon Windows XP added version 2 namespace urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2 but namespaces and element names were used consistently and v1 elements were in the v1 namespace. With Windows Vista Microsoft introduced v3 namespace urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3 and started qualifying all elements, even those defined in v1, with the new namespace. Keep this in mind when modifying the XSLT.