[MonoDevelop] How to add to Toolbox

Rafael Teixeira monoman at gmail.com
Thu Jul 26 09:16:31 EDT 2007


Some more info, inline.

On 7/26/07, George Lober <georgelober at glowsoftware.ca> wrote:

> Rafael Teixeira wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 7/24/07, George Lober <georgelober at glowsoftware.ca> wrote:
> >> Rafael Teixeira wrote:
> >> > You are mixing incompatible graphical technologies, NPlot and
> >> > ZedGraph, are WinForms controls, and currently MonoDevelop has only a
> >> > designer for GTK#.
> >>
> >> I did try the 0.9.9.2 version of NPlot which according to
> >> http://www.mono-project.com/Libraries and
> >> http://netcontrols.org/nplot/wiki/ is a GTK# version. ???
> >
> > They have both, AFAIR, so you need to use the right one.
> >
> Admittedly I did try other versions because it wasn't loading into the
> toolbox, but the gtk version is the nplot-gtk-0.9.9.2.tar
> <http://netcontrols.org/nplot/downloads/nplot-gtk-0.9.9.2.tar> which can
> be gotten here:
> http://netcontrols.org/nplot/wiki/index.php?n=Main.DownloadArea among
> other locations, and this one also does not load. I assume you are
> supposed to select the .dll file to load the widget, thou I have to say
> that it is kind of strange to me to use dlls in a Linux environment.

The problem is that Stetic, the GTK# GUI designer module in
MonoDevelop, expects controls to expose additional metadata, like the
ones you can create with it yourself, and the nplot control/widget
probably doesn't have it.

Nevertheless, you can use it, by designing the rest of the
form/window, not forgetting to prepare a container for the control,
and them adding the control on code, in short, Stetic will generate
only part of the code to build the UI. Also someone could take the
opportunity to build an Stetic wrapper/adapter around nplot, so that
everybody could use this wrapped nplot widget as any other widget that
Stetic supports.

>
> Yes, I have looked at these pages, but these don't answer all my
> questions. I guess a certain level of knowledge is assumed. For example
> , I know that C#(a C++ copy as I see it) is a Microsoft created language
> and is used in .net, and also that C# is mentioned in mono
> documentation.

Most code in Mono is written in C#, including our C# compiler and tens
of thousands of classes in the core and extended libraries. A small
part of the code in Mono is in VB.NET including the VB.NET compiler,
and the runtime basic bits are written in C.

So knowing C#, is kind of a prerequisite to better understand the
runtime environment and IDE you are using (most of MD is written in C#
also, with additional modules in Boo, and some other languages that
target the Mono/.NET environment).

> Then there is GTK# which is a wrapper for GTK+, which
> uses C/C++.

GTK+, uses only C, as all Gnome things in general, because things like
non-standardized C++ name-mangling made it  less portable at those
ancient times, when the decision was made.

GTK# is a wrapper written in C#, with small bits of C glue code, to
offer all GTK+ widgets to programs written with any Mono/.NET
language.

>The thing is I don't actually see it saying anywhere what
> language GTK# uses. I deduce it must be C#. Is this correct?

Already answered.

The thing is: you can, in Linux, use Mono with a choice of languages:
C# (the best supportted language in Mono and MD). VB.NET and Boo
(similar to Python but statically typed) also are well supported by
MD. AFAIK also Nemerle, IronPython and maybe IronRuby, work well in
Mono but doesn't have direct support in MD (you still can use it, but
lots of niceties aren't offered for these other languages).

The most limiting factor in truth is that, currently, Stetic only
generates C# code so if you'd like to use the Designer, you'll need to
code the UI in that language, but then you can write your main logic,
in any other supported language, as long as you house it in a library
project (dll) (or vice-versa, you can put all the UI in a C# library
to call from your Boo main program, for instance).

Some support for Java programming was put into MD, a long time ago,
because you can run Java programs in Mono, inside a C# written Java
VM, called IKVM (or you can convert Java jars to Mono dlls with
IKVMC), but I didn't notice it (MD Java support) being actively
maintained of lately.

Hope it helps you and some others to sort out the current "state of
the nation" in mono/md-land.

:)

-- 
Rafael "Monoman" Teixeira
---------------------------------------
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
Augusten Burroughs


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