[MonoDevelop] General purpose Toolbox and PropertyGrid

[Michael Hutchinson]

Hi,

On 4/14/06, Alexandre Miguel Pedro Gomes <alexmipego at gmail.com> wrote:
> Something I've been thinking for a while is that Gtk# objects should be
> extended to make use of .Net ComponentModel's model. Not just because it is
> supposed to be the way things work in .Net but because it provides support
> for somethings like Databinding and other things like the case of the
> PropertyGrid.

Yeah, that idea does have merit. There's a whole infrastructure
architecture already designed and built that can easily be used. But
remember that IComponent is not the perfect solution, and Microsoft
themselves have dropped it for WPF/Avalon and the Cider designer, and
written a simpler component architecture
(http://www.urbanpotato.net/Default.aspx/document/2224).

The ideal solution for the designer services would be something
designed specifically for Monodevelop, but ComponentModel-aware. Maybe
an abstract ComponentModelDesignerDisplayBinding could wrap these with
ComponentModel services? These then could consume a more generic
ToolboxService and PropertyGridService that could be used by text
editors and Stetic and the project pad and anything else. The
PropertyGrid could be aware of IComponents, description attributes and
change services etc, but use a MonoDevelop alternative if they're not
present.

Lluis, how would this fit in with Stetic? Is this an approach you'd be
interested in? I'm going to be applying for the Google SoC this year
with a view to properly integrating AspNetEdit into MonoDevelop, and I
would really like to be able to share some designer infrastructure.

> IMHO we'll never have databinding support as for MWF or ASP.Net in Gtk#
> because of this.

I heard it would become a priority after finishing MWF. It doesn't
necessarily have to work the same way; there are better databinding
models out there.


Michael