Xwt goals

[tomaszkubacki]

Hi !

First of all - thanks Lluis!

It's great toolkit - played it a little and seems very cool!

I've first question:
Is xwt aimed to be 'lowest common denominator' toolkit
or are you going to allow platform specific controls ?

e.g Ribbon control is quite popular on windows but i don't think
anyone will use it on OSX.

Cheers.

Tomasz Kubacki

[Lluis Sanchez Gual]

Hi!

XWT aims to be a fully portable toolkit, which means that controls provided by the XWT toolkit must be available in all platforms and backends. However, it doesn't mean that XWT will just provide the 'lowest common dominator' widgets. For example, Cocoa has a Search Entry widget, which is not available in GTK, but in GTK it can be easily implemented with a Text Entry and an Image with a search icon. XWT defines the widget abstraction, and backends have to implement it using a native widget or a combination of them.

I haven't thought about the case of the Ribbon, but it is a matter of finding the widget abstraction, and then using the best combination of native widgets for each platform. If it is not possible to find a widget abstraction that makes sense at least in Mac, Windows and Linux, then maybe this widget has no place in XWT.

In any case, you could create your own custom Ribbon widget and provide a backend only for WPF. In Windows you would use the Ribbon and in other platforms something else. That Ribbon widget would be part of your application.

Lluis.

[Marek Habersack]

On 13/01/2012 12:09, Lluis Sanchez Gual wrote:
Hey guys,

> Hi!
>
> XWT aims to be a fully portable toolkit, which means that controls provided by the XWT toolkit must be available in
> all platforms and backends. However, it doesn't mean that XWT will just provide the 'lowest common dominator'
> widgets. For example, Cocoa has a Search Entry widget, which is not available in GTK, but in GTK it can be easily
> implemented with a Text Entry and an Image with a search icon. XWT defines the widget abstraction, and backends have
> to implement it using a native widget or a combination of them.

What about a visual designer? People will eventually want it and it seems it's a good case for, at least a subset of, XAML,

>
> I haven't thought about the case of the Ribbon, but it is a matter of finding the widget abstraction, and then using
> the best combination of native widgets for each platform. If it is not possible to find a widget abstraction that
> makes sense at least in Mac, Windows and Linux, then maybe this widget has no place in XWT.
>
> In any case, you could create your own custom Ribbon widget and provide a backend only for WPF. In Windows you would
> use the Ribbon and in other platforms something else. That Ribbon widget would be part of your application.

marek

[Lluis Sanchez Gual]

El 13/01/2012, a las 12:35, Marek Habersack escribió:

> On 13/01/2012 12:09, Lluis Sanchez Gual wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> XWT aims to be a fully portable toolkit, which means that controls provided by the XWT toolkit must be available in
>> all platforms and backends. However, it doesn't mean that XWT will just provide the 'lowest common dominator'
>> widgets. For example, Cocoa has a Search Entry widget, which is not available in GTK, but in GTK it can be easily
>> implemented with a Text Entry and an Image with a search icon. XWT defines the widget abstraction, and backends have
>> to implement it using a native widget or a combination of them.
> What about a visual designer? People will eventually want it and it seems it's a good case for, at least a subset of, XAML,

I plan to include a designer widget in XWT. There is already a DesignerSurface widget, although it's not yet implemented :). My plan is to use XAML. I've already done some tests of XAML serialization, and there is some work to do, but that's the idea.

Lluis.

[Marek Habersack]

Nice going :) - perhaps in time folks can come up with silverlight backend and such :)

marek

[Lluis Sanchez Gual]

That would be awesome :)

[Marek Habersack]

I don't know if you saw that Android development toolkit
(https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside) which works right on device (even includes
Midnight Commander) - it would totally rock if we could run MonoDevelop on a tablet some day :)

marek

[Michael Gielda]

Hi,

I have one question about the future of the framework - thought I'd use the topic (even though it's a little rusty) for that -

Is it an official plan to redo MonoDevelop in xwt one day when the framework is mature enough. or is it just an idea that is being explored? I can see some active development in the framework since the end of the holidays, so you guys must have some aims in mind :)

Best,
Michael

[jmalcolm]

On Friday, January 13, 2012 4:16:02 AM UTC-8, Marek Habersack wrote:

I don't know if you saw that Android development toolkit
(https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside) which works right on device (even includes
Midnight Commander) - it would totally rock if we could run MonoDevelop on a tablet some day :)

marek

MonoDevelop runs on my Windows 8 tablet already. The wait was not that long. :-)
 

[Lluis Sanchez Gual]

El 31/08/2012, a las 17:42, Michael Gielda <michal...@gmail.com> escribió:

Hi,

I have one question about the future of the framework - thought I'd use the topic (even though it's a little rusty) for that -

Is it an official plan to redo MonoDevelop in xwt one day when the framework is mature enough. or is it just an idea that is being explored? I can see some active development in the framework since the end of the holidays, so you guys must have some aims in mind :)

The plan is to migrate MonoDevelop to XWT, but it will be done incrementally. New UI will be implemented using XWT when we can.