http://www.osnews.com/story/13988/Interview_the_Men_of_Mono Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:53:39 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?104685 http://osnews.com/thread?104685 This sounds funny Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Trollstoi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104729 http://osnews.com/thread?104729 while I agree with pretty much everything said this interview is really nothing new. Well other than a linux guy recommending that you use MS as a source of information ( he's right though ).

I am a lot more interested about the future of the project but I guess that would be a little bit too much to ask for. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cg0def) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104747 http://osnews.com/thread?104747 I am concerned about the lack of progress in delivering WinForms, although GTK# is capable, I am more interested in using WinForms for crossplatform work and at the moment it just justn't really work. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snowflake) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104749 http://osnews.com/thread?104749 I think they want .Net 2.0 compatibility first. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ma_d) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104780 http://osnews.com/thread?104780 Yeah like where's the calendar. Is it hosted on Flickr Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Blink) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104791 http://osnews.com/thread?104791 I think they want .Net 2.0 compatibility first.

Hmmm. It really does depend on what is meant by .Net 2.0 compatiblity, because you can go on trying to achieve that for years. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104792 http://osnews.com/thread?104792 Its not a brief interview as being said, its a deep and troughout interview. I have the Linux Format lying in front of me here.

Also its not that they explain the advantages of C# over other languages, but explain why they think it has an advantage over other languages. That is completly different. They also say that Java can do anything C# can but the not like its nature more or less.Edited 2006-03-15 21:34 Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devnull) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104812 http://osnews.com/thread?104812 Yeah, but they're all sick! ;-) Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DoctorPepper) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104818 http://osnews.com/thread?104818 Well, there's been an advance in the Winforms area, and it's planned to have most the api done for the 1.2 release. However, you can try the current status checking out the code from the mono svn.

Carlos. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (calberto) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104821 http://osnews.com/thread?104821 Sadly i'm not living in the UK, so i cant get the "Linux Format".
Does someone knows how i can get the interview nevertheless? Maybe they have an archive were i can find it in some weeks or so?

As a answere for people who are asking for WindowForms.
I wouldn't invest to much time in learning/using WindowForms. WindowForms are dead, with vista MS will switch to a new toolkit. And for GNU/* *BSD Systems Gtk# is the prefered toolkit and cross-platform ability improves from version to version. So I would say for everyone who isn't a MS-only user Gtk# is definitely the way to go. Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pinky) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104836 http://osnews.com/thread?104836 Like most things in the free software world nothing comes without work. According to http://www.mfconsulting.com/blog/archives/000128.html if the community wants winforms support then they need to help test it.

So go and find a windows form application, download mono and winforms, and test it out! Submit bug reports and comments in the appropriate places and be positive!

Good things take time. In doing the above it made me realise, holy s$%t thats an amazing piece of coding which allows me to pick a random .net app from codeproject.com and have it run, unmodified, on linux! Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nzjrs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104843 http://osnews.com/thread?104843 Usually when I go find a winforms app to test in mono - it's NOT winforms support that is lacking - but usually something else. Many of the apps I try to run under mono just simply die with no error in the console (even with verbose and debug output on)

Mono is still missing some non-winforms support that prevents many VStudio-built apps from running properly.

But otherwise, I love the project, and I try out new versions when they're available! Thu, 16 Mar 2006 00:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104846 http://osnews.com/thread?104846 We download the release version of mono regularly to check on winforms status. We have a bunch of MS apps we want to port over to linux and mac but for the moment mono is not ready (mac in particular). Progress is being made but only slowly.

This summer we've decided to use QT for new apps rather than wait for winforms (it was a choice between Java and QT, and Java apps tend to look awful so it was QT in the end). I know people will say, contribute yourself to speed up development, trouble is, as much as that would be desirable, we don't have the resource. Easier sometimes just buy, for a few K dolalrs, a ready made kit like QT (a few K will only pay someone for 2 or 3 weeks so it's not a large amount of money).

As for not using winforms because MS is moving to the next great thing, one has to remember that we need something now, not later. Winforms will be around for a long time and it works (at least on Windows) now. The next MS stuff will not be ready for crossplatform for many years to come. As for GTK#, sure people use it, but our primary dev platform is VS (secondary is Delphi) and GTK# is not integrated in VS like Winforms. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 00:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snowflake) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104888 http://osnews.com/thread?104888 I agree. Its usually stupid little things like people hard coding path seperators (/ vs ) and network stuff (have to run as sudo).

But on the whole I agree that mono is there in most part (and getting there) for the rest.

Its the damn 80/20 rule - 80% of the work takes 20% of the time! Thu, 16 Mar 2006 02:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nzjrs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104948 http://osnews.com/thread?104948 Break the .NET compatibility and make mono a whole new language? Thu, 16 Mar 2006 06:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kozo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104970 http://osnews.com/thread?104970 I do also not live in the UK.
Its no problem to subsribe if you live outside of the UK. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 07:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devnull) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104977 http://osnews.com/thread?104977 I agree. Its usually stupid little things like people hard coding path seperators (/ vs ) and network stuff (have to run as sudo).

Well, we need to know such things to fix them. You use it, it fails, we fix it. A lot of times, the documentation in msdn is not very clear, and we have to make some assumptions, and have a first implementation. Then, when colaborators come and use the code, we have the chance to know if the implementation is wrong.

That's one of the problems implementing a compatible product of MS ;-) Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (calberto) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?104978 http://osnews.com/thread?104978 Break the .NET compatibility and make mono a whole new language?

There is some added functionality in Mono (Gtk#, Mono assemblies, etc).

However, introducing big changes brings the problem of losing the compatibility between them, which is a very helpful thing for a lot of developers, and something that we would like to keep. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (calberto) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?105010 http://osnews.com/thread?105010 In the Netherlands it is thankfully quite easy to find Linux Format in book- & magazinestores. They even sell it at the small bookshop at the local trainstation. Thu, 16 Mar 2006 11:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (XemonerdX) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?105261 http://osnews.com/thread?105261 Instead of using the Microsoft WinForms API to develop applications that run great on windows and okay on linux. Why not use Gtk# to develop applications that run great on linux and okay on windows? Really gtk# is as cross platform as Windows.Forms will be when it works completely in mono. Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MatzeB) Comments