Re: Development of cross-platform GUI for Open Source DBs

2006/11/27, Tony Caduto <tony_caduto(at)amsoftwaredesign(dot)com>:
> One could also use Mono 1.2 and any .net 1.1 IDE such as Borland
> Turbo C# or Delphi.net (with npgsql .net data provider) both of which
> you can get for free here:
> http://www.turboexplorer.com
> or SharpDevelop which you can get here: http://www.icsharpcode.com

Mono/.NET is definately worth the consideration. However, I'd advice you not
to go with Turbo C#, as it only supports .NET 1.*, so you won't be able to
use such goodies as: generics and nullable types, which are quite handy,
especially for the database-oriented applications.

But I'm not sure about .NET 2.0 support of the full-featured Delphi.NET.

> Sure you could use Wxwidgets with Python or whatever, but you
> development time is going to be more than twice as long as compared to > a
application built with Delphi.

> I have also tried MonoDevelop, but it has a way to go before being
> really useful.

Initial development phase is really short with Delphi/VCL, I agree. But when
project evolves, many problems appear, which show how odd VCL is in this or
that place. The same, but to a lesser extent, applies to Windows.Forms.

I suggest going with some mature GUI platform, such as Gtk. It has bindings
for .NET and is included in standard Mono download. With it you will get all
benefits of layout-based GUI toolkit, like: you won't have to write extra
code for rendering forms correctly when they are internationalised.

So my advice goes towards Mono/Gtk#. There is a bunch of programming
languages for Mono/.NET to choose from, so choosing one of them mostly
depends on your taste.

---------------------------------
Olexandr Melnyk,
http://omelnyk.net/