[Mono-list] Windows Forms...wah

[Christoph Wille]

I'm on the #develop team (and I know which UI frameworks are in development)

Having that said: we look at portability differently than other MS .NET 
developers (which are the majority), we are planning for it. But most 
developer don't. They don't care unless it is as simple as switching a 
compiler switch (like we are supporting Mono inside #develop). If they have 
to rewrite the application, at a minimum they will think twice and abandon 
the idea a second later.

You could start a poll for MS .NET programmers: given those four UI 
frameworks, which one would you choose to write apps when you'd plan for 
running on Windows and Linux? Guess what... next to no one would care about 
any framework other than Windows Forms.

Windows Forms is important to get MS .NET developers to use the Mono platform.

I was only commenting on the part "If there is a better GUI toolkit and it 
could run on most platforms, most people will use it instead of WinForm".

Chris

At 11:17 AM 9/20/2002 -0400, Adam Treat wrote:
>I don't see what the problem.  We have _four_ toolkits that are actively 
>being
>worked on.  Qt#, Gtk#, SWF with winelib, and XSharp.  As far as 'on par with
>the Windows Forms tools' well Gtk# has glade and we're working on uic#
>backend for the Qt Designer as we speak.  The good folks over at ICSharpCode
>have also expressed interest in supporting Gtk# and Qt# as well as SWF with
>SharpDevelop.  I think we have a wealth of GUI toolkit options here guys:-)
>
>Cheers,
>
>Adam
>
>On Friday 20 September 2002 11:02 am, Christoph Wille wrote:
> > 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