[MonoDevelop] Some ideas about Monodevelop

[Lorenzo E. Danielsson]

On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 02:11 +0000, hemant kumar wrote:
> Hello guys,

> Been working with Monodevelop and AddIns since last few days and i
> liked the architecture. I have some random thoughts about improving
> the general look and feel of the editor:
>       * All the buttons and toolbar should be compact and small, so
>         that they take less screen space.

Disagree. They should follow the Gnome HIG so that MonoDevelop feels
consistent with the rest of Gnome. I do *not* want an application that
starts doing it's own customization.

>       * The space between, various widgets should be decrased, i see
>         plenty of space between solution pad and the editor.

Hm, do you think so? MonoDevelop is so far the only IDE I've been able
to use for more than five minutes, and I'm quite sure that the nice
clean look is a big part of that. Contrary to most other IDEs,
MonoDevelop does not look cluttered to me. 

I think following the Gnome HIG is a good idea, unless there are
compelling reasons to do otherwise. 

>       * As Mono and Monodevelop are more like a platform, we should
>         seperate them from the underlying Desktop(Gnome). When i use
>         Monodevelop under KDE, the icons of files and folders would be
>         missing. Ok, this is kind of impossible, but yet just a wish.

Why? I want applications to integrate well with my desktop environment.
Otherwise, what is the point of the DE? One of the main reasons that I
choose Abiword/Gnumeric over OpenOffice, Epiphany of Firefox, etc. is
that they are all Gnome applications. That matters to me.

Mono is a platform, MonoDevelop is an IDE. I see no problem with writing
another IDE for KDE/creating a Mono plugin for KDevelop/Porting
MonoDevelop to use Qt (with whatever the C# bindings happen to be called
today). That seems like a better solution than asking all of us who use
Gnome to give up on Gnome integration.

>       * There is no search,backward,forward capability while browsing
>         the help manuals. Monodoc is hardly stable, the
>         docbrowser(desktop version of monodoc) crashes now and then.
>         Frankly, i feel really frustrated when i browse through manual
>         pages and finally i end up with the web version.

I also used to have problems with MonoDoc crashing, but it seems more
stable now.

>       * ASP.NET editor. .NET has been created as a unified platform
>         for Web and Desktop development. But somehow, that focus is
>         lost when it came to Linux world.
>       * RAD tool for ASP.NET and Glade/Stetic integration.(On the
>         cards i guess?)

I'm personally very interested in Glade3 integration. As soon as some
code lands in, I'd like to help in testing it. I hope the Glade3
integration isn't just seen as a temporary solution before the mythical
Stetic arrives.

When Glade3 and MonoUML are integrated, I think we'll have something
really nice. If only we could get Bazaar NG integration as well.. ;-)



> I know guys, i should stop whining and try to do something(*yes i am
> trying to do something*). But yet, i just wanted to put forward my
> point of view. Without a powerful development tool, the whole Mono
> project will be a lame saint.
> 
Partly true. To be frank, I really have no problem doing development
with Vim, Glade and Zsh. I think they are a very powerful combination.
But I do use MonoDevelop from time to time, and I think it does play a
really important role, especially for people who come from the Windows
world. And I know from interacting with them that things like integrated
UI designer is essential.

Lorenzo

> With Regards
> Hemant
> 
> 
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