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Mono's WinForms 2.0 Implementation Completed
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 13, 2008 10:21 PM
from the do-not-confuse-with-wind-farms dept.
from the do-not-confuse-with-wind-farms dept.
adrian.henke writes "After four years of development, 115K lines of source code, and 6,434 commits, Jonathan Pobst announces that Mono's WinForms 2.0 implementation is now complete. This announcement has been long awaited by any .NET WinForms developer who has ever tried to get an applications to work on Linux using Mono."
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This will be a big help (Score:4, Interesting)
Going to be nice to finally be able to support our Linux desktops as well.
We'll see how porting goes and if it's really worth the trouble.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This will be a big help (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:This will be a big help (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that Java doesn't run perfectly on Windows and Linux. Many people see C# as a language that set out to be a better Java than Java, and many people feel that on the Windows platform it succeeds. Combine that with the existing Windows install base and you have a pretty compelling reason to develop in C# over Java.
Ten years down the line, however, I could see C# facing extinction if it does not become truly cross platform.
Parent
Re:This will be a big help (Score:4, Funny)
Knock knock.
Who's there?
...long pause...
Java.
The only reason, ONLY reason, to use Java is because you are psychotic and have a deep, long standing hate for your users and wish to inflict some of the most insidious pain and torment upon them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I do hate my users and wish to inflict pain on them, but I don't want to use Java.
Is there a way I can inflict pain and torment in a platform agnostic way?
Cheers
But can I actually use it for anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
By that standard linux isn't safe to use either (Score:2)
These extremists are not going to surrender. They see open source/free software as a form of communism. These are not the sort of people who call off an already declared war. They are going to keep on filing new lawsuits until they manage to land their lawsuit in the courtroom of a judge who is just as warped and extreme as they are.
And how do you think Alito will feel about Linux? (Score:2)
The final judgement by the Roberts & Co. is not likely to be one you're gonna like.
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Worse, call the layers.
The police are to busy raiding trailer parks, writing traffic tickets, busting drug users, and harassing kids.
Re:But can I actually use it for anything? (Score:5, Funny)
Which layer? does Mono have a self-destruct layer?
using System.Microsoft.Infringement;
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
If (Patents.Count > 0)
{
ForEach(Match match in Patents
{
Console.WriteLine(match.patentname + ": " + match.patentcode);
}
}
}
Error Buffer Overflow
Yeah, yeah... you meant "lawyers" I know... and I dont code in C# so it might not do anything anyways...but... "call the layers" made me laugh...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I know you said you don't code C#, but really that's no excuse for missing a close bracket at the end of the ForEach statement (which, just FYI, should be "foreach" in C#, this isn't VB.net!)
Anyway, I laughed, and if I'd had mod points, you'd have got a "Funny" from me.
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Gawd, such a waste of white space. Let the holy brace wars begin ...
BTW, for all those elsewhere in the comments who are raving about C$ .... oops, C#, C# isn't going much anywhere in comparison to either java or c or c++, or even vb [tiobe.com].
"This announcement has been long awaited ... (Score:5, Funny)
All five of them.
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry.
Re:"This announcement has been long awaited ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Mono is good stuff (Score:2)
% export MONO_IOMAP=all
% mono my_program.exe
You might be surprised how well it works.
Very nice (Score:5, Funny)
I know what you mean -- ELF just doesn't hold a candle to Perl.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The fact that python can run under
SWF GUI builder? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got a couple of apps I wrote while I was using Windows and now I use Fedora Linux. The back-end library code and my newer apps that use GTK# are fine to edit in MonoDevelop, but I've got a VirtualBox install with WinXP and Visual Studio in it for now so that I can update the System.Windows.Forms layouts when I need to.
Hopefully the "API complete" also means they'll fix some of the odd rendering I've seen at times
But why the Win32 style in WinForms? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the blog:
Why WndProc, HWND and WM_ messages are still there? I understand Microsoft built a software monopoly by mixing Window System management and a GUI toolkit together (and transferring it to .NET ensures that monopoly), but isn't .NET supposed to be one of the most advanced toolkits out there? Having to rely on WndProc, HWND and WM_ messages seems a very bad design for me (I've been developing MFC apps for a decade now and I know of the numerous problems that might come up), and unfortunately Mono WinForms copied that in order to be compatible with .NET.
Initially I thought 'wow, a contender to Qt/Java for building cross-platform apps', but after reading the blog and being an supporter of anything but Win32 (the ugliest API ever written), I will think twice before using Mono or .NET for cross platform development.
Re:But why the Win32 style in WinForms? (Score:4, Interesting)
This work on WinForms is intended to provide a way to run
Parent
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Re:But why the Win32 style in WinForms? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't want to be compatible with Win32, use GTK#.
Parent
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WinForms as a library is a little old fashioned, but in combination with Visual Studio it's very slick and one of the most productive GUI environments around for building desktop applications. If you want to build fruity super-slick GUIs, you have WPF to do that (but the Visual Studio designer isn't as nice).
There isn't a better platform on Window
Re:too little, too late? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:too little, too late? (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop conflating Mono and
In fact, the primary API is the same API lots of open source software uses: Gnome, Gtk+, and many standard open source libraries. All Gnome apps using Mono use the Gtk+ APIs.
I wish there were better alternatives, but C# + Gtk# + MonoDevelop is probably the most elegant development platform right now. Nothing else really comes close. Python is a more elegant language but doesn't have a comparable IDE. Objective-C and Cocoa are messily intertwined with C and C APIs. And Java is a bloated pig.
Parent
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Re:too little, too late? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I'd rather work directly in Python/Ruby on GTK/Qt than go through an extra layer that is
And while Mono's not horrible, but it's not nearly as fast as the Sun JVM, so if I want fast bytecode I'd rather use Java than C#.
Parent
Re:too little, too late? (Score:5, Informative)
PyGTK layers:
Your code (python)
PyGTK code (python)
Python runtime (C)
PyGTK->GTK binding (C)
GTK+libc code (C)
kernel (C)
IronPython + Gtk# layers:
Your code (python)
IronPython code (python)
IronPython runtime (CLI)
Gtk# code (CLI)
Mono base (CLI)
Mono runtime (C)
Gtk# -> GTK binding (C)
GTK+libc code (C)
kernel (C)
That's a fun one to deploy, let me tell you.
Parent
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At the risk of feeding the trolls, in what way is C# + Gtk# + MonoDevelop less of a bloated pig than Java? Java is actually a very fast, extremely productive platform to develop on with a top-shelf toolchain (in fact several).
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Now, X seems to slow some things down a little but I haven't really seen the comparative mono applications act in the same ways as java seems to. However, it should also be noted that I can't really compare apples to apples here because I don't have applications doing the same things in similar ways written in the different languages to re
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The performance of a single benchmark is hardly indicative of a whole platform... you might as well say - "Linux is fast? Go try run Azureus and weep".
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"Java might be a great development platform, but the performance of java apps on the desktop is so pitiful they're painful to use."
More?
"Sever-side apps written in Java have great perfs, however, which is easily explained since they're meant to be run on a score of UltraSPARC hyperthreaded multicore CPUs that command a ton of RAM."
Better that way, yes, you're right.
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Re:too little, too late? (Score:5, Insightful)
Java is fast? Go try to run Azureus and weep.
Oh, you do? And you think it is fast? Try utorrent on Windows or Transmission on OSX or KTorrent on Linux some time.
People can write slow programs in any language. The question is, can moderately competent programmers write fast, efficient, maintainable programs in them? Pointing to one example is pointless. Back on topic, a quick check on Alioth [debian.org] will show you that overall, Java is faster than C#/Mono but uses more memory (although on some benchmarks the opposite is the case). It's also worth pointing out that although Java is not faster than C++ on any benchmark, it's substantially slower on only three. In general the performance of a program has much more to do with good design and good algorithms than it has to do with choice of language.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll find that that's because C# was designed with an IDE in mind. Everything is statically typed (for intellisense) and the object oriented nature allows for easy code completion. Even look at the new LINQ (Allows you to query arrays/lists/etc. in memory)
var result = from dataType in myCollection
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I have nothing like you describe when working with C++ under Visual Studio.
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Re:Would be awesome... (Score:5, Informative)
-WCF: GREAT new tech. You write a module, and then expose it remotely via config. So if you want to change from Remoting to Compliant Web Services you simply change a config setting. Or you can expose simple services via REST. It abstracts "transport" from "functionality".
-Cardspace: dud. Single sign on/identity mgmt which is being replaced by openID it seems. Cool idea though.
-WPF: Cool new xml based description language to fully abstract process from gui much in the way ASP.NET does. It also lets UI designers "skin" apps seperately from the app code itself. VERY nice tech, especially the bindings.
-WF: Nice tech, not quite mature but neat to use. It allows for program logic to be described in an xml format (XAML) and shown in a gui designer. I really like workflow tech NOT because it lets business users program (it DOESN'T) but because it gives you an artifact that users can understand AND CONFIRM.
var monkeys = from animal in myAnimalsCollection
where animal.Type == monkey
select new {animal.ID, animal.Name, animal.BirthDay};
foreach(var monkey in monkeys)
Parent
Re:Would be awesome... (Score:5, Informative)
Your example in Python with a list comprehension, broken down into multiple lines for clarity:
monkeys = [
(animal.id, animal.name, animal.birthDay)
for animal in myAnimalsCollection
if animal.type is monkey
]
And a comprehension of multiple lists is similar:
pairs = [
(a, b)
for a in range(10)
for b in range(10)
if b == a * 2
]
You have been able to do that for many years in Python, and yet Microsoft fanatics act like it's something new and innovative.
Parent
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The LINQ syntax does that. It's not just a fancy way of iterating over an in-memory collection.
Re:Would be awesome... (Score:5, Informative)
However, there are alternative ORM python syntax to DB mappings, such as django syntax
AnimalCollection.filter(type='monkey')[:10].order_by('age')
(talking about simple orms, not full sqlalchemy table declaraions)
Being able to customize filtering of container classes for iterators definition would be cool anyway.
Parent
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LINQ also introduces type inference, anonymous types and extension methods to C#. While none of this is new, I have not yet seen another _popular_ language supporting it.
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Re:Would be awesome... (Score:5, Informative)
All the usernames on a Unix system:
Dates from an SQL table:
Search Google for "list comprehensions" and print the text of every "<a href" tag on the page:
Basically, anything Python can loop across works inside a list comprehension. It's a basic construct of the language.
Parent