[Mono-osx] Menu Bar for Mac OS X?

[Joanna Carter]

Hi Andrew

> This is of course very difficult because the guidelines (i.e. what users
> expect) are very different on Windows and Mac OS; not so much on Linux.
> 
> You can easily write for Windows and run on Linux but it's impossible to use
> the same GUI on Mac OS and get away with it in the eyes of the user.

Good points. Linux seems to be a land where people don't really care what the app looks like, as long as it works.

My guess is, that most developers who think that cross-platform solutions that don't follow HIGs for the target platforms are not established Mac users. Coming from Windows or Linux, where anything goes can "dull the palate".

> Qt doesn't look very native on Mac OS. It follows the general look and feel
> but all the controls seem foreign. 

Once again, this is one of my pet peeves with cross-platform solutions. The controls might have all the attributes of a Cocoa control but they aren't necessarily the same controls that a "native" developer would use or a "native" user would expect.

> Finally, Embarcadero are working (for release this summer, I think) on a
> cross platform version of Delphi. Their toolkit would work for Pascal and
> C++ but is very expensive.

Yup, I just hope that it doesn't suffer the same fate as Kylix - an expensive IDE for a Linux market where most things are free.

But, at least Kylix ran on Linux; "Delphi X" (or whatever it gets called) involves having to develop your software on Windows, and remote debugging it, under Windows, whilst it is running on a separate Mac. So, if I have a Mac and want to use their product, I will have to either buy a separate PC to run Windows, or install Parallels or VMWare Fusion to run Windows in a VM to run their IDE to create a program for the Mac.

I would be interested to know how many developers are willing to pay several thousand dollars for such a product when they can use Apple's own toolset for free?

> I still think separate GUIs are the way to go. Mono/.NET allows you to use
> the same library on all target platforms and keeping GUI and logic separate
> makes it much easier to support the application later.

Yeah, it's just convincing the average "drag and drop" programmer that good OO design is worth the effort :-)

Joanna

--
Joanna Carter
Carter Consulting