[Mono-list] Windows.Forms, KDE

[David]

Ajay Kumar Dwivedi wrote:

> I don't know how much effort is involved in porting winforms to
> linux, but feel that mono would be incomplete without winforms support.

I agree with Ajay.  I expected the announcement that Windows.Forms was not 
going to be supported to ignite something of a firestorm, but it seems to 
have gone over without even as much as a whimper.

Ximian's position appears to be that Mono exists to gain the advantages of 
the .NET architecture, not to enable people to run Windows .NET applications. 
Still, it's been implicit since the beginning that Windows.Forms would be 
supported.

For example, I recall an announcement on the Gnome Basic list some time back 
that GB had been cancelled because (1) VB.NET obsoleted VB, (2) Mono would 
run VB.NET, and therefore (3) working on GB was pointless.

Windows.Forms may be a moving target, making it is akin to writing an AWT 
library with Swing being just around the corner.  Still, it appears that 
Ximian is not only discouraging people from working on WinForms at this 
point, but *ever* supporting WinForms. (I hope I'm wrong here)

The argument that Windows.Forms couldn't be completed without using Wine, and 
thus shouldn't be done is also a puzzlement to me. Why is the use of Wine a 
bad thing? Is it an issue of licensing, code bloat, or the immaturity of 
Wine? Is there something implicitly wrong with Wine?

While being able to run Windows .NET applications on Mono isn't a primary 
concern of Ximian's, I think that it has enough value that it should be 
encouraged, rather than discouraged. The idea that Mono would support .NET 
applications under Linux has been the part about Mono that's made it most 
interesting for me and my co-workers.

-- David Cuny
(Admittedly, not an active Mono developer)