[Mono-list] GTK# vs. Windows forms?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> I've recently started tinkering with GTK# for the first time, and 
> getting used to Glade.  What are the pros and cons of developing on, 
> say, Visual Studio with Windows Forms vs, maybe, GTK# on MonoDevelop?  A 
> combination of Glade and GTK# seems mature enough to be a viable 
> alternative to Windows Forms on the surface, but what about underneath 
> the hood?
> I'm a newbie to C# and I'm no .NET expert, so don't bombard me with too 
> many details ;-).

Same, I just started developing in C#/Mono.

The advantage of GTK# seems to be that it is more portable (currently,
at least).  I also think the widget packing is superiour to what is
allowed in Windows.Forms.  The drawback is that the documentation
*S-U-C-K-S*;  it is trial and error to see what widgets work in what
versions, and what ones work on the Win32 GTK# assemblies verses the
native Linux ones.  Also I'm not aware of any way to do data binding in
GTK#.  There also isn't any widget to render HTML on Windows (the gecko
bindings don't work) and then there is the ponderous Gtk.TreeView
widget.

Windows.Forms is certainly better documented, and works better on
Windows;  but you will bump up against things that just don't work when
not on Windows, which is frustrating.  The documentation is very good.

Overall, currently, it seems which platform you want to support
'better' (pleasing my Linux users is more important to me than the Win32
users) and your tolerance for crappy documentation (I'm used to after
all these years in Open Source).