[Mono-osx] Delphi Prism and all those Cocoa bridges

[marc hoffman]

Andrew,

> I'll be busy with other stuff until May. If until then I hear two  
> more good
> things about Prism, one of which related to Cocoa, I'll buy it! :-)  
> Your
> example up there doesn't count for the two.

;)

> If you guys add more support for Cocoa (Monobjc), that's exactly  
> what I am
> looking for. And learning Delphi cannot be more unproductive than  
> learning
> REALbasic. :)

indeed. the only thing to "learn" really, is the language syntax  
(which is quite easy to get along with - and a no-brauner if you ever  
used Delphi/Win32). beyond that, the framework is the same as in C#,  
VB or any other .NET language.

> (I understand Delphi Prism just adds itself to an existing  
> installation of
> Visual Studio Professional if found?)

correct, 2005, 2008 or (unsupported) VS2010, whatever it finds present.

it also installs its own copy of VS2008 Shell, if no Visual Studio is  
present (or iof you have, say, VS2005, and decide you still want Prism  
in 2008)

> I managed to write a program in C# that checks the platform it's  
> running on
> and uses Cocoa on Mac OS X and Windows Forms on Windows. It was an
> interesting exercise but it's ultimately useless as the NIB file  
> required
> the program to be in a Mac bundle anyway and it cannot be shipped  
> that way
> on Windows.
>
> Hence two or three different binaries will be the way to go. (Is  
> there a way
> to use #IFDEF to organise those different build settings in the  
> source?)

of course, yes.

> There is more demand for Mac applications than ever, I think. And  
> with .NET
> we are a good step closer to cross-platform code.

agreed on the first part. we'll just have to see how much of this can  
be covered by Mono, and how much will be done natively. Me, i'm a bit  
between the chairs, as on the one side, we do Prism, and it's support  
for Mono and OS X is one of my personal favorites of it. On the other,  
i've also been getting into native Mac/iPhone development, have been  
porting two of our our other corem products to Objective-C, and am  
*quite* enjoying that, as well.

So me, personally, i'd be torn between the two if i were starting a  
new application project for the Mac. i guess a lot would depend if i  
needed cross-platform (then Prism/Mono would be the way to go for me)  
or not (in which case i'd probably prefer native Objective-C).

> Do you know if this will be a separate product or something that can  
> be used
> by existing Delphi Prism customers?

i cannot make any definitive statements, as this would depend on a  
several factors, among them what our partner CodeGear, who we have an  
agreement with for the exclusive resale rights for what is currently,  
in essence "Oxygene/Delphi Prism for Visual Studio" would be  
interested in doing.

but my gut feeling would be that the best and most sensible option  
would probably be to have said MD integration as an additional feature  
of the existing product SKU, rather than as a separate 'Oxygene/Delphi  
Prism for MonoDevelop" product - especially with the range of  
developers being interesetd in Prism *just* inside MD probably being  
quite niche-y.

but again, this is just me thinking out loud, and in no for a  
commitment or even a vaguely discussed plan. for now, i'll worry about  
*getting* MD out fro under GPL, before we take the next step ;)


yours,
marc