[Mono-list] Using Mono/C# to develop simple OSX app

[Maury Markowitz]

> On Oct 26, 2015, at 9:48 AM, sams <samspurgeon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> Sorry for the basic post but I'm new to OSX development and Mono. I am a
> VB.net programmer and want to develop a simple single form app native to OSX
> that will open a text file, parse it and generate a PDF with some text and a
> couple of images.
> 
> I am thinking that C#/Mono would be my easiest route into doing this, before
> I start down the road of learning it and experiementing, I'd love to know if
> you think this is the best way of doing things given my background and what
> I want to do.

Absolutely.

You will find the conversion from VB.net to C# relatively easy, although there are definitely a few “gotchas”, they tend to be edge cases. There are online tools you can use to convert your existing code to C#, although they have a number of bugs that will require some manual hunt-n-fix to get through. I converted a *very* large VB.net project to C# in just over a week.

Once that is done, Mono basically takes care of the rest. It provides enough basic functionality that your app will run under OSX. However, the UI itself runs *very slowly* (you can watch it drawing) and is basically a faked Windows UI, looking nothing whatsoever like OSX. However, if your app is very simple, it shouldn’t make much of a difference - except in the File dialogs, which are horrible.

So I’d definitely recommend giving it a whirl, if even just for fun and a chance to learn some C#.