[Gtk-sharp-list] viewers for different file types

[Natalia Portillo]

Hi,

El 04/09/2010, a las 18:00, Adam Tauno Williams escribió:

> On Sat, 2010-09-04 at 17:47 +0200, Rampage wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>> sorry but i'm pretty noob with GTK# so i'm here to ask you about this 
>> issue i'm dealing with.
>> when i work with .NET on windows i have the capability of using 
>> components from other applications to integrate with my apps, for 
>> instance if i have to render a webpage i can use the internet explorer 
>> component and plug it into my app, the same goes for PDF files word 
>> files etc etc.
>> i was wondering:
>> is there something similar in gtk#?
> 
> I think not.  There seems to be a slowly forming standard of using D-Bus
> [Yay D-Bus!] to support application components.  But it isn't really
> well-adopted or fully developed yet. :(

Anyway using any of that components will give you a coupe of headaches and missing libraries as soon as you move outisde certain environments.

If you use a Windows.Forms component you can be almost sure it uses a Windows-only library that requires to be installed by the user of the application (yeah, the Acrobat component for reading PDF is tempting, but requires Acrobat Reader to be deployed on each user's computer).
Using a GTK# component that is not purely C# will pretty much do the same. Using a GnomeArchiver component to visualize .ZIP contents (like Rampage stated originally) will require runtime checks for the libraries to be present, distributing it alongside your program, lose of portability (forget Win32 and Mac OS X), or silent crashes.

You can however, create you own control using a purely C# assembly (in your example, check SharpZip or Ioniz.Zip, I prefer the later) that will be more easily installable, dependable and portable.

Regards,
Natalia Portillo
Claunia.com