[Mono-osx] Mono 2.6 and Windows.Forms on MacOSX

[Andrew Brehm]

Which brings us to option 3, which I am most fond of: support both
possibilities.

Wrap whatever is possible in Cocoa in Windows.Forms and allow direct access
to native objects for what remains.

A Windows.Forms binary should run unmodified on Mac OS X and look native.
But it should also be possible for .NET programs to use features of Cocoa
that are not (and cannot be) represented by the Windows.Forms wrapper around
Cocoa.

I think both are important.

But this requires consolidation of the projects or at least some
organisation. Which brings us back to my original point. :-(


duanew wrote:
> 
> After extensive research in how best to bring our C# application from
> Windows to Mac we deemed the only viable solution was to write the UI in
> native Cocoa.  The UI embeds Mono and using mobjc/mcocoa the C# classes
> expose the core business logic.  Yes some code is written twice.  This
> overhead is well worth the cost of having a native looking UI on Windows
> and
> on Mac.
> 
> Many similarities exist in a UI but it is the details that make an app
> feel
> natural.  Given that most Mac users are fanatics, especially in our user
> base, having a sub-standard UI was not an option.
> 
> The theory of reusing a Windows Form application out of the box sounds
> good... however in practice the end result will not behave like a 100%
> native Mac application.  That is not an acceptable option in my mind.
> 
> It is the same concept for MonoTouch.  They did not reinvent how iPhone
> apps
> are rendered.  They are using the native tools which provides an accurate
> UI
> for the end user.
> 
> Duane
> 
> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Lee V. Andrus <landrus2 at by-rite.net>
> wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> Andrew Brehm wrote:
>> >
>> > ...
>> > (You need a name for your project!)
>> > ...
>> > IDEALLY we would need one project consisting of DLLs that allow native
>> use
>> > of Cocoa classes and methods as well as a Windows.Forms compatibility
>> > wrapper. And the recommended way for .NET applications on Mac OS X
>> would
>> > then be to use Windows.Forms and the wrapper and direct Cocoa classes
>> only
>> > for some effects.
>> > ....
>> >
>> I have floated the name "Cocoa Conspiracy" in this forum, but no one was
>> interested in conspiring with me.  My project is implementing
>> System.Windows.Forms.XplatUICocoa, the Cocoa Driver for Mono's MWF.  This
>> is
>> the heart of the implementation of MWF.  It is not a bridge or thin
>> wrapper
>> like the products we discussed.  It currently uses MObjc and MCocoa to
>> facilitate access to the Cocoa framework.  All the other implementations
>> of
>> XplatUIDriver just use PInvokes to access the underlying window system
>> APIs,
>> but they all are based on simple C functions calls.  Marshaling Mono
>> subclasses of the Cocoa framework classes across the divide is a big
>> help.
>>
>> The project's aim is to help the portability of .Net/Mono applications
>> the
>> Mac.  Some insist you cannot get a really good UI without customizing it
>> for
>> each platform.  But I believe that the ability to take an executable from
>> one platform to another, and get reasonably correct behavior and
>> appearance
>> is achievable and will give a huge boost to cross-platform
>> interoperability.
>> There are other cross-platform GUIs (like GTK#) out there, but I suspect
>> that the people using them are outnumbered by .Net developers using SWF.
>> SWF is key to making the Mac accessible to the .Net talent pool.  The
>> Carbon
>> Driver is riddled with calls to functions that have been deprecated or
>> are
>> not available to 64-bit applications.  Apple introduced Carbon to ease
>> the
>> transition from OS 9 to OS X and seems more inclined to retire it than to
>> maintain it.
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://old.nabble.com/Mono-2.6-and-Windows.Forms-on-MacOSX-tp24047606p26981940.html
>> Sent from the Mono - OSX mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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> 
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