[MonoDevelop] Gtk# GUI Designer?

[Dan Winship]

On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 21:51 +0200, Sven H. wrote:
> I am very interested in using Monodevelop as multi-platform GUI RAD 
> tool. The best option for now seems to use Glade which is not integrated 
> into MD. I read at several places that there are plans for a new Gtk# 
> GUI Designer not based on Monodevelop but I was under the impression 
> that the work on this is not really started.

That's correct. I'm the person who's going to be hacking on it, but I'm
still busy with Evolution 2.0 stuff right now...

> Are there any concrete plans about the design of such a Gtk# GUI Designer?

Yes. I'm hoping to combine the best ideas from a bunch of different GUI
designers (mostly Glade, the Visual Studio forms designer, and the
NeXT/OS X Interface Builder, but I've looked at a bunch of other
Tk/Motif/Qt/etc GUI designers too.) One of the big problems with Glade
is that the Gtk box model sort of forces you to plan everything out in
advance, and if you change your mind about the layout, you often have to
completely tear everything apart and rebuild with new boxes. I want to
make it so you can just lay out the widgets, and have it automatically
figure out the right set of boxes for you.

> Is there a time schedule?

No

> Given the amount of work needed to implement the Gtk# GUI Designer -  
> would it be sensible to implement a monodevelop/glade add-in as interim 
> solution?

Well, you can already have glade files in your Monodevelop projects,
right? I don't know how easy it would be to modify Glade so that it
could actually run inside the Monodevelop window.

-- Dan