A new form designer VS.NET could be written for GTK# or any new GUI toolkits that we wish. I don't think that would be a problem.
I agree that there should be as few roadblocks when porting MS.NET -> Mono. But remember, .NET is still in its infancy. There is a strong possibility that if a better cross platform GUI toolkit comes along that people will start using it. Both Swing and SWT are gaining momentum despite arriving after AWT. Windows.Forms is pretty much a richer and ms-windows dependent form of AWT. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing the port but....the Windows Forms API design is horrible. Here's what I fear will happen if Mono goes the Windows.Forms direction: + Windows.Forms is complex because of its heavy dependence on Windows. + MANY, MANY Windows.Forms based apps utilize P/Invoke to overcome bugs + and missing features. This makes porting those applications to Linux + even harder. + Windows.Forms *may* be deprecated before the port can be completed + (like AWT was). I'm being paranoid here.... + Windows.Forms is poorly designed to start with. I hate using Windows + Forms (compared to Swing). I'd hate it even more if I had to rewrite + it to run on Linux! Wouldn't all the time be better spent designing a better common cross-platform UI library rather than cloning one that is poorly designed and complex (in all the wrong ways)? ::Tum > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On > Behalf Of Christoph Wille > Sent: Saturday, 21 September 2002 3:03 a.m. > To: code; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [Mono-list] Windows Forms...wah > > At 10:19 PM 9/20/2002 +0800, code wrote: > >I agree with you. If there is a better GUI toolkit and it could run on > >most platforms, most people will use it instead of WinForm. > > Define "most people". From my experience it will attract programmers > starting on the new platforms like Mono, but only very few from the > MS .NET > camp. You are almost limiting the portability to a one-way road, which is > not a good thing. > > Most important to the success of a platform are the tools - and unless you > have tools that are on par with the Windows Forms tools (yes, that would > be > Visual Studio .NET's forms designer), you can have the best platform in > the > world and only few are going to use it (it needn't be hard, just harder > than "the other thing"). > > We can discuss (and even flame) about the potential ugliness etc. of > Windows Forms - it is the UI toolkit that sits on top of .NET, fact. It > must be darn easy for MS .NET programmers to re-wire their apps for Mono > (read: as little changes as possible, next to no roadblocks) > > Chris > > > _______________________________________________ > Mono-list maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
