[Mono-winforms-list] Windows Forms.

[Greg Brown]

> What's the point of .NET on Linux if it won't run .NET apps? =20
> Surely 100% is the goal - if Mono can't take advantage of all=20
> the programs that are being or will be written for .NET, why=20
> would anyone install Mono?  There'll always be faster native=20
> code compilers, better windowing toolkits for specific tasks,=20
> better languages for specific domains, and so on.  I thought=20
> Mono was there to bring about a common platform independent=20
> of the OS and programming language.

I guess we have different goals for Mono, and specifically WinForms on
Mono. I envision Mono/WinForms as the successor to Java on the desktop.
Like Java, .NET has the potential to become a vehicle for deploying
cross-platform applications. Unlike Java, Microsoft is not going to do
everything it can to prevent it from succeeding.

In Java, while it is possible to write code that makes calls to native
APIs, it is generally not necessary, and is often discouraged. The JDK
was designed to minimize or eliminate the need to do so for all but the
most performance-intensive tasks. The .NET framework is similarly
designed, which leads me to believe that the development philosophy
would also be similar. Basing the fundamental design of Mono/WinForms on
the need to support a particular platform-specific API (e.g. COM) seems
like it will just enable and encourage bad programming practice.

Greg