[Mono-osx] Menu Bar for Mac OS X?

[Andrew Brehm]

Hi Joanna


Joanna Carter wrote:
> 
> Hi Andrew
> 
>> This is of course very difficult because the guidelines (i.e. what users
>> expect) are very different on Windows and Mac OS; not so much on Linux.
>> 
>> You can easily write for Windows and run on Linux but it's impossible to
>> use
>> the same GUI on Mac OS and get away with it in the eyes of the user.
> 
> Good points. Linux seems to be a land where people don't really care what
> the app looks like, as long as it works.
> 
> My guess is, that most developers who think that cross-platform solutions
> that don't follow HIGs for the target platforms are not established Mac
> users. Coming from Windows or Linux, where anything goes can "dull the
> palate".
> 

Windows is between Linux and Mac OS when it comes to user expectations.
While it should be safe to port a GUI from Windows to Linux, porting Mac OS
to Windows or anything to Mac OS is not usually appreciated by users.



> 
>> Qt doesn't look very native on Mac OS. It follows the general look and
>> feel
>> but all the controls seem foreign. 
> 
> Once again, this is one of my pet peeves with cross-platform solutions.
> The controls might have all the attributes of a Cocoa control but they
> aren't necessarily the same controls that a "native" developer would use
> or a "native" user would expect.
> 
> 

Yes. REALbasic is a very good Carbon-based solution. But that's mainly
because it started on Mac OS. REALbasic GUIs are ported from Mac OS to
Windows which is somewhat easier than the other way around and REALbasic
does a very good job with it too.

So at the moment, if I wanted to develop an application for Windows and Mac
OS sharing a GUI, I would use REALbasic.



>> Finally, Embarcadero are working (for release this summer, I think) on a
>> cross platform version of Delphi. Their toolkit would work for Pascal and
>> C++ but is very expensive.
> 
> Yup, I just hope that it doesn't suffer the same fate as Kylix - an
> expensive IDE for a Linux market where most things are free.
> 




> But, at least Kylix ran on Linux; "Delphi X" (or whatever it gets called)
> involves having to develop your software on Windows, and remote debugging
> it, under Windows, whilst it is running on a separate Mac. So, if I have a
> Mac and want to use their product, I will have to either buy a separate PC
> to run Windows, or install Parallels or VMWare Fusion to run Windows in a
> VM to run their IDE to create a program for the Mac.
> 
> I would be interested to know how many developers are willing to pay
> several thousand dollars for such a product when they can use Apple's own
> toolset for free?
> 

Windows developers who are looking to develop for the Mac painfree. I can
imagine any number of C++ and Pascal developers wanting to write for the Mac
(and Linux) but I cannot imagine them to want to learn Objective-C and
rewrite or switch to Qt from the VCL.

Maybe Delphi X will be like REALbasic for C++. I am optimistic. Embarcadero
have done an excellent job with Delphi so far!

I don't think a native IDE is important. I now use VirtualBox to run
Windows.

A Mac with Windows in a VM seems to be the standard setup for developers now
anyway.




>> I still think separate GUIs are the way to go. Mono/.NET allows you to
>> use
>> the same library on all target platforms and keeping GUI and logic
>> separate
>> makes it much easier to support the application later.
> 
> Yeah, it's just convincing the average "drag and drop" programmer that
> good OO design is worth the effort :-)
> 
> 

I wrote a small application at work which kept expanding into this huge
does-everything program. Now I wish I had paid more attention to a good
design at the beginning. I am slowly refactoring everything.

In general, and this is what I like about Xcode, it is good if the IDE and
framework force the developer to pay some attention to OO design.


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