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"Windows.Forms compatibility on other OSes just makes it easier to write cross-platform software like Java is capable of."
The big problem is that Java's often lampooned for being substandard as far as that goes for GUI applications, and .net is even worse. Windows.forms will make the application look good in windows, bad everywhere else. gtk# will make it look good on linux, so-so on windows, and horrid on osx if it even runs. wx#, never been able to even run at all on any linux distro I've tried it on.
C# had the potential to be 'the' answer to crossplatform development in a reasonably fast language, but, sadly, it's not.
You are calling .net C#, people need to understand there are many languages for .net, C# is just the most common. Boo is probably the best of the languages - the .net platform allows much easier language development. This way you can focus on language usability, features, and syntax niceness, with a fairly fast backend (Boo code is as fast as C#)
There is nothing stopping someone from creating a truely cross platofrm .net gui. I can imagine it being quite nice. XML based, and rather than setting pixel sizes, etc you just create a hierarchy of components. You establish interrelations like this component is on the border of this component, etc. The layout is created based on the target gui/theme. This way it looks right in native guis. Windows support would be easiest - just access System.Windows.Forms.





Member since:
2006-01-26
I know this is flamebait - but I must respond.
There really is nothing inherently "Microsoft-only" about .NET and the C# language. If you look at the class structure, it matches Java more than it does anything else.
Windows.Forms IS somewhat microsoft-centric, but .NET and Mono do not require this for development. You can just as easily write your software using GTK# and then have all windows users install GTK# in order to use your software. Windows.Forms compatibility on other OSes just makes it easier to write cross-platform software like Java is capable of.
Also, a clarification, this is not a port of .NET - it is a port of Mono - which is a 100% re-implementation of the .NET CLR, c# compiler, and .NET class libraries. That is kinda like saying that GCC is a port of Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler - or open-source Java VM's are a port of Sun's JVM.
Edited 2006-02-17 19:59