[Mono-dev] Mono for Symbian

[Andreas Färber]

Hey,

> PAL
> actually expands to Platform Adaptation (not Adaption, which isn't  
> even
> a word) Layer. This is layer of code that provides a common set of
> interfaces for accessing the underlying OS APIs.

That I know as mono/mono/io-layer! ;-)


>> To create S60 and UIQ UIs we'll need new class libraries
>> anyway.
>
> Yeah, this is another big problem with the CLI. As it stands, there is
> no defined profile in ECMA-335 (the CLI spec) that details the
> requirements for implementing a graphical library, so CLI implementors
> are free to set their own standards.

Is it a problem? Java's common-denominator AWT isn't really a success  
story.

> It would be nice to see something
> like the PAL for SWF, so that the underlying UI technology is  
> abstracted
> away from the application developer and they wouldn't have to care  
> about
> whether they are using GWES or X11 or Aqua.

Isn't this already being done for System.Windows.Forms?

On the other hand, while developers love to have simple frameworks  
and abstractions, users tend to like applications adapted to their  
platform of choice... which is hard to accomplish with a unified  
class library.

Using different managed class libraries for structurally different  
UIs then is not as bad as for one application having six disjoint  
code bases. Also, once there are multiple managed libraries it should  
be much easier to create a common framework than having to worry on  
how to p/invoke into C++ at that level of abstraction.

All efforts for .NET on Symbian have always focused on providing  
Visual Studio users the ability to deploy apps unchanged on an  
additional target platform, selling the illusion of homogeneous  
systems. Both approaches should thus be able to coexist, given that  
the Mono community is much more aware of platform diversity and yet  
already uses Gtk# as one instance of a specialized UI framework.

Andreas