[MonoDevelop] wx.NET, #WT, or other cross-platform gui widgets

[Jon Molesa]

Hello list,
	I recently found myself in a situation where the only computer that
I had to work on was an old Mac.  I've been developing GUI apps for a
while using either Monodevelop or Sharpdevelop.  Depending which
environment I'm in.  Since I was now on a Mac I began looking for some
way to continue my development on the Mac.  To my disappointment, MD
would only run with fink, which is an option, but not what I wanted.  I
wanted a way that I could write my progs and the could run on any
platform unaltered, with a native look and feel.  After much searching I
came across wx widgets and more specifically wx.NET.  However, the
project seems a bit stale as all the developers have moved on.  Possibly
to mono, as reported by Jason Perkins in a recent email.  I'm not a
c/c++ programmer per se, so using wx itself was not really an option for
me, and then you'd have to cross compile the code to get it to run on
the various systems.  The beauty in wx.NET is that it runs unaltered
using either mono or .NET and creates the window using the native
widgets of the system.  My question is why did GTK# become so popular so
quickly?  If we really want true cross platform development wouldn't
wx.NET serve that purpose better?  Don't get me wrong, GTK# is nice but
when run on windows, it just doesn't look like windows, and to run on a
Mac you need fink.

	I'm interested in taking porting the MD or SD code over to use
wx.NET as its widget framework.  This would allow for an IDE that would
run on the major platforms and we could create .NET apps on what ever
system we have.  Further, it would use wx.NET for it's widgets of apps
it creates.  Again, this would allow for an app to be coded and
distributed to the major platforms.  

	Does anyone have any information on Sharpdevelop #WT effort?  The
domain registered appears to have been snagged when it expired.  I
appreciate any thoughts and insights that anyone can provide as to why
this is either a good or a bad idea.  Thanks.


-- 
Jon Molesa
rjmolesa at consoltec.net