Re: winforms for GUI?

>
>
>> This whole .Net thing also seems to be something the Windows guys are
>> attracted to but makes the other platforms
>> second class citizens.
>
> That is true.  But .Net is so gigantic that even when Mono is a smaller
> version of it, that makes Mono bigger than the other open-source
> alternatives.  The guy who is doing Mono did Gnome before and all the 
> Gnome
> desktop development is already switching over to Mono.

I do embedded stuff. One of the things I like about Python is that it 
is easily embeddable.
It seems to me that you want to use more than just the GUI from .net 
which means if someone wants to
port Prothon to an embedded OS etc they have to port Mono/.Net Which as 
you say is "Gigantic"

>
>> Mono is still relatively immature and its only
>> Linux not OS X. Which is close but not the same.
>
> Here is a page about Mono running on OS X.  It appears to work except 
> for
> Qt:
>
> http://www.mono-project.com/using/macos.html

Touche

If the main reason you want Mono is for the GUI, then it doesn't seem 
to be a step up from WxWindows.

>
> The Mono project is very large and is really at 1.0, not Beta.  There 
> are
> not only a ton of open-source programmers working on it, but Novell is
> pumping money in also.  I wouldn't bet against it if I were you.

I am sure that .Net and Mono will be successful because Microsoft is 
pumping billions into .Net. And riding on Microsoft's coattails is
always a safe bet.
  The point is that
Python freed me from having to depend on Microsoft(.Net C#) or 
Sun(Java) for my existence since there was little that
I needed to do that a combination of Ansi C and Python couldn't do as 
well or better than C# or Java.
With Pyrex even the C stuff got easy. I am not attracted to reverting 
back to intermediate languages like Java and C# when I can use Python
and Pyrex C more efficaciously.

The Python community has always been richer because it had a high 
degree of independence. .Net and by association Mono will always follow
Microsoft's vision for how software should be created. Its a 
monoculture. The advantage of Mono is that you don't have to pay 
Microsoft for the priviledge of participating in their vision. C# and 
.Net are powerful tools but Python and its ecosystem are more viable 
for me.

I had hoped Prothon would be a better Python but it sounds like you've 
become so enamoured with .Net and Mono in the last few days that you
have lost sight of the vision you originally had for Prothon. =(

>
> I had never heard about Mono until this past weekend.  I have been 
> studying
> up on it since then.  I am very impressed, to say the least.

I have known about it for some time if only in passing.
Excuse the analogy, but in my opinion, its like near beer for people 
who don't drink (like me). Somehow saying that
.Net is open via Mono makes it not the same as being held captive to 
Microsoft proprietary software. It isn't captivity but then its not 
independence either.

Of course maybe I just don't understand what you are now planning to do 
differently but my gut doesn't like it.

Sorry for the rant.

Sam