[Mono-osx] An open letter to the OS X Mono group.

[Jaume Llardén Prieto]

Hello Robert,

As you know, a Mono CLI application runs on Mac OS X out of the box.  
Open a terminal, type 'mono <application name>' and you're done.

A Mono GUI application isn't that easy, at present. The application  
needs a nib file, the archived user interface. Or it can use Windows  
Forms and run on X, and be ugly, no Mac OS look and feel at all.

I guess you'd like to have a Windows Forms implementation similar to  
the Swing or SWT implementations on Mac OS X, which create the UI  
without the need of a nib file. In Java, some additional work is  
needed either, to adapt it to the Mac OS idiosyncrasies. I don't know  
if work is being done in this direction for Windows Forms, though.

You can avoid using Objective-C entirely by using Cocoa#, which gives  
you access to Cocoa as C# classes. With Cocoa# you need to wrap your  
common application core (in MVC pattern parlance, the model classes)  
to interact with the nib file. There's a short tutorial on Cocoa#  
here: http://code.google.com/p/cocoa-sharp-dev/wiki/SimpleTutorial.

As I see it, you can't avoid, at present and for the next future,  
using nib files, which obliges you to do some Mac OS specific  
development. You decide the way: Cocoa# for pure C#, or either  
Dumbarton or ObjC# for mixed Objective-C and C#.

Cheers,
jaume


On 23 Mar 2007, at 18:21, Robert Mullen wrote:

> I work for a company in the automotive logistics sector that is  
> investigating alternatives to Windows on the desktop. I have long  
> been a proponent of Linux but there has simply never been a strong  
> enough business case to justify the risk and labor involved in a  
> changeover. Recent events with our CIO have potentially provided  
> this justification. Our CIO is Dale Frantz who has had an ongoing  
> conversation with the media about our company’s displeasure with  
> regard to Microsoft tactics and strategic direction. A glimpse of  
> this can be found here:
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do? 
> command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=285550&intsrc=article_more_bot
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do? 
> command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=286292
>
> Our investigation of OS X has been somewhat of a watershed event.  
> For me and another in the company with a small bit of background in  
> the open source community, OS X creates a compelling package for a  
> business desktop. I know some of the open source community will not  
> be happy with the closed portions of OS X but it appears to me that  
> for the first time there is a desktop that is strategically aligned  
> to compete with Microsoft. A good portion of this is due to having  
> the weight of Apple behind the desktop. When you combine the polish  
> and support level of this desktop with the goodness of the UNIX  
> underpinnings you have a knockout one-two punch in our opinion.
>
> To that end I have been working with Mono as we do not see  
> programming in Objective-C and Cocoa as an attractive alternative.  
> I have a small application running on Windows-OS X-Linux via Mono  
> as a proof of concept that our backend systems can be accessed via  
> multiple OS’s from one application. Unfortunately the OS X version  
> is pretty rough around the edges. I have followed the conversations  
> about the state of the port and would like to say that a native  
> Quartz implementation of Windows Forms would be a major point of  
> attraction for us. It seems that work has been done in that  
> direction but more bodies are needed. Being a simple business  
> application development shop I don’t think we have the skill set  
> necessary to donate man hours to this worthy cause but I would like  
> to know if there is another way that we can help in moving this  
> project along.
>
> I welcome comments from anyone (including the possibility that I am  
> looking at this in a flawed manner) and would especially like to  
> strike up a conversation with some of the forces behind this  
> development effort to see how my company can support it.
>
>
>
> TIA,
>
> Robert Mullen
>
>  r o b e r t m AT a u t o w c DOT c o m
>
>
>
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