[MonoDevelop] MD and Winforms

[Ian Norton]

On Mon, 2009-06-08 at 06:05 +0100, Ernesto wrote:
> El 07/06/2009 08:22 a.m., Ian Norton escribió:
> > For those of us out there that end up needing to use winforms, do you?:-
> >
> > * lay out the winforms code by hand,
> > * fire up visual studio on a windows pc/vm
> > * try with mwf-designer.
> >    
> I use Visual C# Express to create new forms. Otherwise, I maintain 
> winforms code by hand (which is most of the time). My forms have lots of 
> custom controls and visual hierarchy, and mwf-designer fails badly.

Yes, I really hope MWF gets some love soon :)

> One of these days, I'm going to spend some time trying to run Visual C# 
> 2008 or SharpDevelop on Wine. One can get Microsoft .NET Framework to 
> install under Wine. I wonder if newer versions of Wine can run basic VS 
> or SD.

VS or SD do not work under wine yet, i've tried with the latest
crossover office too. I suspect that they both require too much in the
way of kernel based services for them ever to work on wine or mono.

> I also thought about trying to get SharpDevelop to run on Mono. Perhaps 
> trying to replace Windows API dependencies (which I guess are mostly 
> about toolbars and other UI elements) with managed versions. But the new 
> SharpDevelop 3.0 has some strong dependencies on Windows _and_ MS .NET's 
> features not implemented in Mono.

SD probably will never run on mono, it uses too many p-invoke calls,
plus for forms layout it uses the designers built into .net, mono doesnt
have these yet.

> Anyway, I guess it's going to be all about the mwf-designer if and when 
> it's working.

I did recently find an old release of x-develop (2.0) , it is a java
based IDE but has c# support targeting mono and windows, it has a gui
designer that seems to work for winforms and gtk. but it is commercial
and quite strange to use. The most recent incarnation of it has
dropped .net as a target too.

I think part of our problem is that gtk# is so much nicer to develop for
than winforms ;)

Ian
-- 
Ian Norton <inb at ncipher.com>
THALES nCIPHER