[MonoDevelop] Forms Designer in MonoDevelop

[Lluis Sanchez Gual]

El dt 19 de 01 de 2010 a les 14:40 -0300, en/na buhochilenoi at gmail.com
va escriure:
> On 01/19/2010 02:18 PM, Lluis Sanchez Gual wrote:
> >> I hope this feature will be available in MonoDevelop future releases,
> >>      
> > We currently have no plans to include a WinForms designer in MD. It is
> > just too much work (taking into account the age of the technology), and
> > other features have more priority.
> >    
> That's sad...sorry for the ignorance, but how much work it is to 
> integrate the current mwf-designer stand alone app?, beside as far as I 
> know, sharpdevelop it have one, I know that it probably use .Net 
> services and clases that don't exist in mono or are not complete, but 
> each mono release is more feature compatible with .Net, so may be is not 
> to much. 

The WF designer is almost completely implemented in the .NET libraries.
If Mono had those libraries implemented, we wouldn't have this
discussion. There is some initial work done, but quite a lot left to do.

> I also know that if you think in a really feature complete, 
> stable, etc mwf-designer comparable with the VS.NET one is probably a 
> big task, but may be is more doable to think in a "basic" one, that it 
> can be even unstable (sorry, but we are all use to have unstable 
> "features" in MD, come on, what feature in MD it wait to be really 
> mature to be included?). 

It is probably possible to integrate an unstable and incomplete designer
in a matter of weeks. But then what? Unless there is somebody working
full time on stabilizing and completing it, it will only be a new source
of frustration to users. 

We already had this experience with the ASP.NET designer. Many people
requested an ASP.NET designer. We have an unstable and incomplete
designer, and we have no resources to complete it. Yet nobody in the
community has taken over it to complete it. Still, people often try to
build and run the designer, finding all sorts of problems. We recently
had to add an entry to the FAQ explaining the status of the designer.

I don't want this to happen to the MWF designer. If we have to implement
it, there must be a plan to make it stable and complete. We (the core MD
team) have no resources to do it. If somebody else can do it, we are
open to contributions.

> That can bring the attention and jump from 
> there...I can even offer my help if some of the MD gurus and hopefully 
> the mwf-designer developer can give me a hand...
> >    
> >>   i think this would be very useful for cross platform dvelopment, and
> >> this can bring monodevelop at .net professional developers.
> >>      
> > Not all professional .net developers use WinForms. Many are happy users
> > of ASP.NET, Silverlight, GTK#, MonoTouch, etc.
> >
> >    
> Agree, no ALL professionals, no one says that, but definitely a big 
> bunch...you compare winform with silverligh??, really?, 

No, I did not compare those. Please read again.

> how many 
> developers you think they are around using silverlight compared with 
> experienced winforms ones?...And the comparision is not fair, MD don't 
> have silverlight designer neither...

There are many features that MD doesn't have. Name any missing feature,
and you'll find somebody saying that MD is useless without that feature.

We don't have many resources, so we have to prioritize. There are tasks
which are much simpler than implementing a MWF designer and which will
benefit all existing users and make MD more appealing to new users, such
as fixing bugs, improving the debugger, adding full support for msbuild,
add support for GIT, improve support for C/C++, support IronPython, etc
etc. There is a complete task list here:

http://monodevelop.com/Developers/Tasks

Regards,
Lluis.


> 
> Mauricio
> > Lluis.
> >
> >    
> >> Bye, Alessandro.
> >>
> >> 2010/1/18 Stifu<stifu at free.fr>
> >>
> >>          MonoDevelop only has a GTK# designer.
> >>          Since you created your project in VS2008, it's probably a
> >>          WinForms or WPF
> >>          project, for which MonoDevelop has no designer support. In
> >>          other words, in
> >>          your case, all you can do in MonoDevelop is change the code
> >>          manually.
> >>
> >>
> >>          SteveRicketts wrote:
> >>          >
> >>          >  I'm using MonoDevelop 2.2 on XP and would like to use the
> >>          Form Designer
> >>          >  but I can't seem to figure out how to show a form.  I
> >>          originally created
> >>          >  the project in VS2008 C#, but when I open the solution in
> >>          MonoDevelop, I
> >>          >  can view any of the forms.
> >>          >
> >>          >  Thanks,
> >>          >
> >>          >  Steve
> >>          >
> >>
> >>          --
> >>          View this message in context:
> >>          http://old.nabble.com/Forms-Designer-in-MonoDevelop-tp27216992p27218082.html
> >>          Sent from the Mono - MonoDevelop IDE mailing list archive at
> >>          Nabble.com.
> >>
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