[Mono-list] Windows Forms...wah

[Tum]

A new form designer VS.NET could be written for GTK# or any new GUI
toolkits that we wish.  I don't think that would be a problem.

I agree that there should be as few roadblocks when porting MS.NET ->
Mono.  But remember, .NET is still in its infancy.  There is a strong
possibility that if a better cross platform GUI toolkit comes along that
people will start using it.  Both Swing and SWT are gaining momentum
despite arriving after AWT.  Windows.Forms is pretty much a richer and
ms-windows dependent form of AWT.

I don't want to discourage anyone from doing the port but....the Windows
Forms API design is horrible.

Here's what I fear will happen if Mono goes the Windows.Forms direction:

+ Windows.Forms is complex because of its heavy dependence on Windows.  
+ MANY, MANY Windows.Forms based apps utilize P/Invoke to overcome bugs 
+ and missing features.  This makes porting those applications to Linux 
+ even harder.

+ Windows.Forms *may* be deprecated before the port can be completed 
+ (like AWT was).  I'm being paranoid here....

+ Windows.Forms is poorly designed to start with.  I hate using Windows 
+ Forms (compared to Swing).  I'd hate it even more if I had to rewrite 
+ it to run on Linux!

Wouldn't all the time be better spent designing a better common
cross-platform UI library rather than cloning one that is poorly
designed and complex (in all the wrong ways)?


::Tum

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mono-list-admin@ximian.com [mailto:mono-list-admin@ximian.com]
On
> Behalf Of Christoph Wille
> Sent: Saturday, 21 September 2002 3:03 a.m.
> To: code; mono-list@ximian.com
> Subject: RE: [Mono-list] Windows Forms...wah
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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