> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:ADVANCED-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of gregory young
>
> Winforms support is very well underway http://www.mono-
> project.com/WinForms
So's Hurd. And Duke Nukem Forever. OK, that's an unfair comparison in many
respects, but I'd have a lot of difficulty in recommending any business
decision on the basis of a not-yet-usable open-source or free project. It's
too easy for one of the key people to get hired by a competitor/get run over
by a truck/lose interest, and for that to stall the project. If it's
delivered to the point where it's usable, that's different. If it has the
backing of a major company, again, that's different (because they can afford
to hire replacements for key people). When I looked, Mono with Winforms
wasn't anywhere near that. It may or may not be now. (And I would class
100%-compatible for 95% of applications as usable, not 95%-compatible for
100% of applications.)
> I personally disagree with this statement though. If you put a winforms
> interface on a *nix box or mac (yes I am treating mac differently) your
> users will hate your interface. It is no different than when you use
> something that has a GTK based interface in windows, its different you
> don't
> like it.
That's OK - I didn't send the email for everyone to agree with me!
Even so, I do believe that if Mono could "just run" .NET apps, it would put
Mono, GNU/Linux, and .NET all in much stronger positions. The fact that it
can't means that you can't treat an application as independent of its
platform, even though we're /so close/ to that with .NET.
I mean, we have a nifty runtime for a completely abstract intermediate
language. We have ECMA standardised base APIs. We have relatively
well-documented non-standardised libraries that allow you to create useful
programs (like ASP.NET and Winforms). And these are rich, usable
applications, not like the lowest common denominator approach that AWT took.
I really, really like the idea of, say, writing a ClickOnce application that
Just Works, whether they're on Debian, Ubuntu or Vista. And as I said, I
think that would be tremendously valuable.
The interface issue you mention is indeed a thorny one. I love Ethereal to
bits, but its GTK interface means I have to think twice about actions that
are second nature in other programs. It's very annoying. But I still use
Ethereal, because it's such a great tool.
You're right though - the interface issue won't be solved just by having
Winforms in Mono.
> I advocate using a MVC/MVP type pattern and actually producing native
> interfaces sure you are only reusing 90% of your code instead of 100%
> but
> you have happy users. Given for situations where you might have 50
> users
> running in unix this obviously is not worthwhile but for any serious
> user
> base...
Absolutely (and good advice irrespective of porting). I just don't think
that'll happen. I think the typical VB shop will take one of their VB.NET
applications, investigate how much effort it'll take to port, then either
try and fail or conclude it's not worth the cost or effort. I don't see
that situation as being any different from the old C + Toolkit approach
which some companies used quite successfully but most never bothered with.
I don't want to sound down on Mono, and I'm sorry if it comes across that
way. I really would like it to make porting/recompiling a thing of the
past. And I really did think that, when it came out, that was the point.
Geoff
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