Re: [Mono-winforms-list] Mono-winforms-list Digest, Vol 110, Issue 2

[Shannon Barber]

I don't understand how WinForm can be deprecated?

The whole point is to get to easily cross-platform deployment and fracturing 
the GUI element wrecks that capability.

I was gearing up to work on a Wayland back-end to WinForms ... is this a lost 
cause now?



From: mono-winforms-list-boun...@lists.ximian.com 
 on behalf of Dan Gray 

Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 3:43 PM
To: Baltasar García Perez-Schofield
Cc: mono-winforms-list@lists.ximian.com
Subject: Re: [Mono-winforms-list] Mono-winforms-list Digest, Vol 110, Issue 2

Thanks a million, this is probably what I'll do in the future.

Thanks again,
Dan

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:29 PM, Baltasar García Perez-Schofield 
mailto:baltas...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi, Dan,


Thanks Baltasar,
Since it's deprecated, what do you suggest I use instead?

Ufff... here be dragons.
http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/

Winforms would be ideal if it was finished, since you would not have to write 
any other code. Unfortunately, it is not. Take into account that there is not 
support for WPF.

Okay, probably the best graphic toolkit available, when talking about 
completeness, for C#/mono, is Gtk#. Gtk# is able to show windows and graphics 
of any kind (Cairo), in Windows, Mac and Linux. It's a good option, I think the 
best one currently, though it is also maybe temperamental and capricious in how 
to show widgets to the user (it thinks it knows better than you). Since you 
would paint in the window canvas though Cairo, I think you're safe, though. You 
also have an installer for each platform.
http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/gtksharp/tutorials/

You can use Stetic, included in the MonoDevelop/Xamarin Studio environment, or 
still use Visual Studio if you're ready to code the GUI by yourself (this what 
I personally recommend).

QtSharp is cool, since it gives you access to Qt, a great toolkit, for C#. 
However, I don't know how easy is to distribute a cross-platform application 
with it.
https://github.com/ddobrev/QtSharp

Xwt is an effort to create a truly toolkit which is native for each platform. I 
don't know about its maturity, though.
https://github.com/mono/xwt

As you can see, there are lots of options, none of them totally good. I'd stick 
to Gtk#: either create a specific UI for Linux, or even replace your curent 
view with a Gtk# one, which will be cross-platform. I mean, provided you are 
ready to "re-code".

Anyway, you app with Cairo (included with Gtk#) could be interesting.

-- baltasar





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Re: [Mono-winforms-list] WinForms deprecated?

[Baltasar García Perez-Schofield]

>
> I don't understand how WinForm can be deprecated?
>
> The whole point is to get to easily cross-platform deployment and
> fracturing the GUI element wrecks that capability.
>

Well, I'm not a Mono Team authority, but yes it is.
You can find an e.mail thread in which Miguel de Icaza reports that
WinForms is buggy and incomplete:

"Hey,

Mono has an implementaiton of Windows.Forms, but it is both old,
unmaintainted and known to have some bugs.

Some people have been able to use it effectively, but we do not currently
have an active maintainer, so we encourage developers to pick something
like Gtk# instead."

I've been unable to find something like that quoted text in the oficial
mono pages for WinForms... due to this, people will continue to try to use
it as a valid asset.

>From what other people has been reporting here, using WinForms in a Mac is
a complete nightmare, so you can only create cross-platform apps for Linux
and Windows, in any case, while Gtk# works for all three platforms.


> I was gearing up to work on a Wayland back-end to WinForms ... is this a
> lost cause now?
>
I will answer that in a generic way: if the use you have to make of
WinForms is valid for your application, then you can do it. But if you find
something that does not work, then you're lost and alone.

-- baltasar
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