[Mono-list] Cross-platform GUI.

[David Burnett]

Dan Winship wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 19:57 +0100, David Burnett wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 11:02:36AM -0400, Dan Winship wrote:
>>
>> > > Amazing.  I didn't that Gtk itself was ported to Mac OS X.
>> >
>> > To clarify, The Gtk X11 backend works under X11 on OS X. There is no
>> > port that uses CoreGraphics.
>>
>>And that's going to be a major problem with regards to the OSX community 
>>accepting Mono/GTK# apps in IMHO.

> 'native' here would mean "uses Mac-specific API calls to draw Gtk
> widgets according to the current Gtk theme". 

Yes

>The resulting app would
> look *exactly* the same using the native Gtk port as it would using the
> X11 Gtk port, it just wouldn't require X11 to be running. I don't think
> this would really be any more palatable to mac users than the straight
> X11 version.

We'll have to disagree on that point. I think that the look and feel 
problem is secondary to the requires X11 problem.
Look and Feel can be worked around to a large degree with a decent port
and an aqua-ish theme. GTK-OSX used native components in a couple of 
area's (buttons and checkboxes) which helps a great deal.

With X11 GTK# you're going to have to explain what

Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

means to a million OSX users and why OSX users need to run
open-x11 mono myapp.exe {I get -bash: open-x11: command not found ??}
or start X11.app (where's that ? / Oh I didn't install that) first
and then run mono myotherapp.exe

That's going to annoy OSX user's that are used to things 'just working',
and put off OSX developers.


> 
> (Alternatively, you could use one of those widget toolkits that
> implements a native UI on any platform. But Gtk isn't one of those.)

Which is my point, if Ximian / Novell are serious about pushing GTK#
as a primary alternative to the .NET framework with regards to Macs
as well as Linux and Windows then its needs to be 'one of those'.

Dave