Mono releases new GUI toolkit, changes everything.

Info at Miguel's blog ...

Miguel wrote:

Every once in a while, people ask us "Will the Mono project implement WPF/XAML?" or "What is your position on Apollo?".

Some suggest that we must have a one-to-one implementation available in Mono. Some others believe that we should implement a new GUI toolkit and plot our own destiny.

...

Today we are announcing the response to Microsoft's WPF/XAML, a response to Flash and WPF/E. A cross-platform GUI toolkit (supports Windows, MacOS and Linux and is easily ported to new platforms) written entirely in managed code and 100% open source. It is completely licensed under the MIT X11 license terms as well, for your freedom-zero needs.

Screenshots here.  This is likely to change *everything*.

Halelujah!

Finally a write-once-run-anywhere GUI, guarantee to be implementable on all platforms.

BTW, the BBC has legal torrents now?

Wha?!?  What kind of lame joke is this?

It looks like quick basic.  Except it's more than 20 years later.  Grats?

Reminds me of Visual Basic for DOS.

Well, if you're going to write a truley cross-platform UI library, you'd start with the lowest denominator (text based?) and work up. Console today, GUI tomorrow.


That was my standpoint when I was asked by a previous boss to write a UI-independent .NET application.  I pointed out the years of work required to got .NET to run on Linux and he decided against it



Herbie

Dr Herbie wrote:


That was my standpoint when I was asked by a previous boss to write a UI-independent .NET application.  I pointed out the years of work required to got .NET to run on Linux and he decided against it

Today you have three choices to build a cross-platform GUI:

* Use Windows.Forms 1.1 API
* Use wxWidgets.NET (native UI on each platform, single API).
* Gtk#

And of course, the fantastic gui.cs

For more details see:

http://www.mono-project.com/Gui_Toolkits

Miguel.

miguel.de.icaza wrote:



Dr Herbie wrote:  That was my standpoint when I was asked by a previous boss to write a UI-independent .NET application.  I pointed out the years of work required to got .NET to run on Linux and he decided against it

Today you have three choices to build a cross-platform GUI:

* Use Windows.Forms 1.1 API
* Use wxWidgets.NET (native UI on each platform, single API).
* Gtk#

And of course, the fantastic gui.cs

For more details see:

http://www.mono-project.com/Gui_Toolkits

Miguel.

++

And of course, OpenGL...although it's not typically associated with "desktop apps". Then again, it would be a lot of fun to change that perception...

blowdart wrote:

Curses?!

Wow, blast from the past! I actually printed out the Curses docs as a student so I could read them in my closet student digs.

blowdart wrote:

... not everything has, or needs a fancy UI.

Burn the heretic!  It must have glossy buttons and the ability to spin things in 3D!


Herbie

blowdart wrote:

Come on, you know there's a need for this; not everything has, or needs a fancy UI.

I was thinking of putting a snazzy 3D interface on Vi just to watch people's heads explode - until I realised three things:

1 - That's a lot of work.
2 - Some people would think it was good, and genuinely want to use it.
3 - Someone's probably already done it.

thumbtacks2 wrote:


And of course, OpenGL...although it's not typically associated with "desktop apps". Then again, it would be a lot of fun to change that perception...

Good point.

There are a handful of OpenGL custom-built UIs out there.

Blender has its own widget toolkit built with OpenGL.   Clutter is another one (targetted at set top boxes) and various people are building some toolkits like that.

miguel.

miguel.de.icaza wrote:

There are a handful of OpenGL custom-built UIs out there.

Blender has its own widget toolkit built with OpenGL.   Clutter is another one (targetted at set top boxes) and various people are building some toolkits like that.

For the longest time, I've wanted to develop a more 3-D based IDE for program development, and on top of a Linux distro. I'm slowly working my way towards that (but I have a major lack of time and I need to finish several other projects first). But it would be fun to develop more GUI controls that are OpenGL based...

Rossj wrote:

Info at Miguel's blog ...

Miguel wrote: Every once in a while, people ask us "Will the Mono project implement WPF/XAML?" or "What is your position on Apollo?". Some suggest that we must have a one-to-one implementation available in Mono. Some others believe that we should implement a new GUI toolkit and plot our own destiny. ... Today we are announcing the response to Microsoft's WPF/XAML, a response to Flash and WPF/E. A cross-platform GUI toolkit (supports Windows, MacOS and Linux and is easily ported to new platforms) written entirely in managed code and 100% open source. It is completely licensed under the MIT X11 license terms as well, for your freedom-zero needs.

Screenshots here.  This is likely to change *everything*.

Late April fool?

Or a very bad joke anyway.

rhm wrote:

Or a very bad joke anyway.

Actually I have a use for it (assuming its memory requirements are very low).... will be trying it later this week

This is suppost to be an answer to Flash and WPF?

It looks more like a weak answer to Ncurses to me.

Ncurses apps have the possibility of rendering improperly in different terminals.

Euphoria was a prime example of this until v3.0, when all ncurses code was stripped from the interpreter.