Orchestra
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Orchestra is a mature, composable WPF shell and framework built on top of Catel.
It has been in active development for over 5 years (initial commit 2012/06/18) and is used in numerous Line of Business (LoB) applications on a daily basis.
Orchestra consists of a main shell including an SDK with services that allow developers to communicate with the shell.
Goals
Provide a robust yet flexible LOB shell, designed with best practices in mind, to jump start the development of desktop applications.
In other words, we wanted to create a shell that dramatically speeds up the time it takes to release a LOB application to market by enabling developers to concentrate more on the business logic and less on scaffolding.
Available Shells
Orchestra provides support for two different shells:
- Fluent ribbon
- MahApps
| Fluent ribbon shell | MahApps shell |
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Project Templates
Want to get up and running fast? Grab the project templates from the Visual Studio Marketplace:
You can pick either the Fluent.Ribbon or MahApps shell and have a fully running project within seconds:
Sample Applications
Here are some examples of applications built with Orchestra and other Orc.* libraries:
| LogViewer | Rantt | CsvTextEditor | FlexGrid |
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| Log viewer | Gantt chart application | Csv file text editor | Data visualizer |
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LogViewer and CsvTextEditor are open source projects hosted on Github.
Other examples of commercial applications built with Orchestra can be found on our official website WildGums.com.
NuGet packages
Prerequisites
A good working knowledge of Inversion of Control (IoC).
Orchestra features
- Application wide logging with an in app log viewer (CTRL + L)
- Command manager
- Shortcut key manager
- Fluent validation
- Themeable 'about box' window
- Themeable splash screen
- Consistent styling across the whole application
Orchestra + module features
We purposely designed Orchestra to be a lightweight shell. However you can 'super charge' it with the following open source libraries: (We use all these libraries with Orchestra. In fact they were designed to work seamlessly with Orchestra. Hint: the libraries all start with Orc.*)
- License management (Orc.LicenseManager)
- Project management (Orc.ProjectManagement)
- Automatic updates (Orc.NuGetExplorer Orc.Squirrel)
- Undo/Redo (Orc.Memento)
You can find the full list here.
Other similar open source projects
For documentation, please visit the documentation portal
Backers
Thank you to all our backers!
Sponsors
Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Become a sponsor]