[Mono-winforms-list] System.Windows.Forms Status Update

[Elfred Pagan]

How are drivers being implemented? Do they map to the basic drawing
capabilities of the native OS?  Where can I find more information
about this?.


On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 15:23:52 -0600, Peter Dennis Bartok
<peter@novonyx.com> wrote:
> [This is a resend - I apologize if you're getting it twice]
> 
> Hi All!
> 
> As some of you may know, we've had a SWF hack-a-thon in Provo last month. I
> figured I'd give everyone a quick update about the current state of things.
> 
> For those who might have missed Miguel's message two months ago here a quick
> intro: After having various problems with the approach of using Wine, like
> threading support, installation issues, debuggability, interop with
> System.Drawing, etc. we decided to start over and develop SWF from scratch
> (again). Except that this time everything is fully implemented in managed
> code. All controls are natively written in C#, using only System.Drawing and
> a small 'driver' that provides the interface to the underlying Windowing
> system.
> 
> At this point, we have the following controls fully implemented in managed
> code:
> - Label / LinkLabel
> - Statusbar
> - Toolbar
> - Scrollbar (Horizontal/Vertical)
> - Trackbar
> - Button
> - RadioButton
> - CheckBox
> - Picturebox (even supports animated pictures)
> - ProgressBar
> 
> These controls should all be fully usable and provide/implement all methods
> and properties documented by Microsoft for System.Windows.Forms.
> 
> Currently, the following controls being worked on:
> - Edit
> - Menu
> - Groupbox
> - Tooltip
> - TabControl
> 
> Additionally, the Form and Control class are still a work in progress, not
> yet complete. Control is tied very much into the underlying driver
> architecture. Currently we have a driver for Win32, and a driver for X11.
> The X11 driver has only been used/tested on Linux, due to lack of time and
> resources we haven't done anything on Solaris or Mac yet, maybe someone who
> reads this will feel compelled to volunteer :-)
> 
> Some of the bigger issues we were facing with Wine, like multithreading, are
> already solved in the new implementation. The developers.exe sample app that
> shows off multithreading, timers and various controls already works nicely
> with the new code.
> 
> We've had volunteers, asking which areas need work, so here a list of
> controls and classes/components that need tender loving care:
> - ListControl
>    ComboBox
>    ListBox
>      CheckedListBox
> - MonthCalendar
> - Splitter
> - TreeView
> - DomainUpDown
> - NumericUpDown
> - DateTimePicker
> - Common Dialogs (probably only doable once all controls are done, unless
> someone implements them on top of Microsoft's Win32 SWF)
> - PrintPreviewControl
> 
> - Macintosh driver
> - 64bit testing and/or support for Solaris
> - Testing and support for other platforms
> 
> The list is probably incomplete, and some things are very large tasks, like
> the ListControl, which consist of several classes that can probably be
> implemented somewhat independently of each other.
> 
> Also, if you would like to contribute but are unsure whether you have the
> time or experience to contribute a whole control, we also need test
> applications. Simple ones that just test every aspect of a single control as
> well as more complex apps that have a purpose like a calculator. Anything
> that helps sniff out bugs in the code or shows people how to use SWF for
> their own needs is needed and welcome. And of course, we also still need
> lots of documentation.
> 
> The current implementation can be found in mcs/class/Managed.Windows.Forms,
> and the core developers usually hang around #mono-winforms on gimpnet.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Peter
> 
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> 



-- 
Elfred Pagan