[Mono-list] Interoperability Tool for Eclipse and .NET WinForms

[Pablo Chacin]

Hi all

Interesing news taken from IBM's alphawork's site:
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/eclipsewinforms?Open&ca=daw-flts-072904

Interoperability Tool for Eclipse and .NET WinForms

Date Posted: July 8, 2004(1 results) Rate it now

What is Interoperability Tool for Eclipse and .NET
WinForms?Interoperability Tool for Eclipse and .NET WinForms is a JavaTM
tool that allows hosting of third-party WinForm controls in Eclipse,
handling of .NET events, accessing of .NET properties, invoking of .NET
methods, and instantiating of .NET objects. This tool can aid in moving
to the Eclipse platform while making use of investments in .NET WinForms
controls. 

This tool allows the following: 
- hosting of WinForms controls in Eclipse 
- accessing of properties (getting and setting values) of WinForms
controls and other common language runtime (CLR) objects from the Java
side including properties of complex CLR types 
- addition and removal of event listeners 
- handling of WinForms controls events from the Java side, including
standard events that even require handlers of EventHandler type and
events that use specialized (that is, defined by the control developer)
type for event arguments 
- full access to event arguments on the Java side 
- invocation of methods of WinForms controls and other CLR objects from
the Java side, including methods that have many arguments and arguments
of complex CLR types 
- invocation of static CLR methods from the Java side, including
methods that have many arguments and arguments of complex types
construction of instances of CLR types from the Java side, including 
- construction of objects that have many constructors, constructors
with many arguments, and constructors with arguments of complex CLR
types
- accessing of CLR enumerations from the Java side -- both as values
and as enumeration objects. 

How does it work?

To host a WinForm control in Eclipse, use a Java helper class and
simply specify the assembly that contains the definition of the WinForm
control class (either using a strong assembly name or the path to the
assembly) and the full control class name. No changes in the WinForm
control are required in order to allow hosting in Eclipse. 

When the control is hosted in Eclipse, Java helper classes and
interfaces can be used in order to access properties of the hosted
control and other .NET objects, to handle .NET events, to invoke .NET
methods, to instantiate .NET objects, and so on -- all from the Java
code running in Eclipse. 
In this version, the .NET properties, methods, and events are accessed
via string names, so it may be desirable to create wrappers for
frequently accessed .NET objects in order to have strongly typed access.


Pablo Chacin