[MonoDevelop] Gtk# GUI Designer?

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Responses inline

Kris Luyten wrote:

>Hi,
>
>On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:06:17 -0300, Marcos Carneiro da Rocha
><mcrocha@terra.com.br> wrote:
>  
>
>>I think it could be used to generate pure code with vb, c# and asp.net.
>>With this approach you can design a form just once and choose the
>>language to generate it after that.
>>The form specification could be a generic xml file.
>>It could be a generic specification that allow me to choose gtk#,
>>winforms, web forms, etc .....
>>    
>>
>
>Although I am not a very regular Glade or Monodevelop user, I am very
>much in favor for this kind of idea. It would be a very powerful
>approach to have a generic GUI builder, that uses some kind of XML to
>save the GUI design without restricting it to a particular widget set.
>One of the problems is how to make sure the widgets used in the
>designer will be available in the target widget set afterwards.
>
>  
>
While conceptually this is a very attractive idea, it is not technically 
feasible. You *can* use an XML format as a storage means for form 
designs and then render that to any given language. That is a good idea. 
However, you can't abstract out the widget set. You will need to store 
property names and their assigned values. You *will* find that the same 
property concept in different widget sets is named differently. Imagine 
if for a CheckBox control widget set A has an IsChecked property while 
widget set B has a Checked property. They won't match up. Any attempts 
to abstract out the concepts will quickly become bloated and troublesome 
especially if you want to work with a closed-source third-party component.

-Mark E.