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

[Jaume Llardén Prieto]

On 25 Mar 2007, at 23:00, Andreas Färber wrote:

>
> Am 25.03.2007 um 21:55 schrieb Jaume Llardén Prieto:
>
>> 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#.
>
> This is simply not true. It is possible to avoid nibs using  
> Objective-C and thus also when using a bridge such as Cocoa#. The  
> only place I needed to use nibs so far was for preference panes  
> (but an empty nib does the job for me). Putting together your own  
> GUI can be done completely in code.
>
> True is that the Cocoa# *tutorials* use nibs and that it is  
> *common* for Objective-C applications to use nibs.
>

You're completely right.

I don't think that's a compelling alternative for Robert, though, as  
he says that "we do not see programming in Objective-C and Cocoa as  
an attractive alternative".

Cheers
jaume