[Mono-osx] Is native look on OS X possible?

[Joanna Carter]

niknil a écrit :

> OK, but Monobjc, Mcocoa etc are specifically for the Mac. What I'm looking
> for is a cross platform framework (=the same code on different platforms).
> Sorry I didn't mention that in my previous post, but I thought that 
> Mono was
> a cross platform framework. It says so on the mono-project home page, but
> when I look at the Mac and Linux screenshots of my sample app, I can see
> that it's not quite that. Although the app runs at different 
> platforms, it's
> not 'true' cross platform in the sense that wxWidgets and QT are.

Unfortunately, you are looking for an unfindable Utopia. Mono is 
certainly a cross platform framework, in as much as it provides a great 
OO framework for the "business" code.

But, as others have said, the UI side of things really cannot be done as 
a single code framework. It is not only the look and feel of the 
individual controls that is important but, also, the layout of those 
controls, according to the guidelines for form design for the relevant 
platform. Now, Linux users might be a relatively eclectic UI experience 
but Mac users really do seem to jealously guard how they want their apps 
to look. Nowadays that means Cocoa controls, laid out to Cocoa UI 
guidelines; even Carbon UIs are now "deprecated"; look at Adobe having 
to rewrite Photoshop because Carbon doesn't support 64bit.

I am guessing but, are you writing some or all your business logic in 
the form units? If so, this would explain your disappointment with the 
UI facilities provided by the Mono framework.

Mac developers are used to using the MVC (Model View Controller) design 
pattern to separate out the UI from the underlying business logic. 
Unfortunately, most Windows developers come from a tool, like Delphi or 
Visual Studio, where it is easy (one might even say encouraged) to code 
your entire application with your business logic actually written in the 
event handlers on the form class.

I have just spent the past four years working with a client who wanted 
to untangle the spaghetti code that had accrued in their Delphi 
application. Our answer was to implement the MVP (Model View Presenter) 
design pattern, which is a more sophisticated MVC, in C#. Now we have a 
UI where the form classes have absolutely no knowledge of the business 
classes they are being asked to display.

Now all we have to do, to get our application to run as a native Mac 
app, is to write a small hierarchy of generic "Interactor" classes for 
the different types of controls, design the forms in Interface Builder, 
and use Delphi Prism to link the C# business classes to an authentic 
Cocoa UI experience.

Joanna

--
Joanna Carter
Carter Consulting