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

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> 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.

Nice approach.    Is any of this code available for previewing anywhere?

> 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. 

I agree;   Additionally, many times, even if you have a native API,
developers go out of their way to differentiate their UIs by creating
custom widgets and custom controls to improve the user experience for a
specific application, so they end up different.

> 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. 

Correct.

> 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.

Additionally, a collaborator has created a small "bundler" that we are
planning on integrated into Visual Studio, the idea being that you can
go from Visual Studio to a Mac-accessible DMG file that you can
redistribute.