Re: winforms for GUI?

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 15:04:54 -0700, Mark Hahn <[email protected]> wrote:

> I didn't really realize until Guido's message that it required a 20 megabyte
> download to use .Net (he said 200 megs <grin> but he was corrected on
> comp.lang.python).  That is a real drag and confirms some of your arguments.
> I can see why it is such a big load though.  The library IS gigantic, which
> can be a good thing.  Maybe it can be trimmed.

>From my POV, the appeal of the CLR is in its strategic value.  If (and
it is an if) Mono succeeds, then I think it's a reasonable bet that at
least all modern Windows and Linux distributions will include the CLR
by default within a year or two.  The download size argument is real,
but for a quite small proportion of installations -- a proportion that
keeps getting smaller.  It's not farfetched to imagine that within 5
years phones, routers and TVs come with the CLR installed.

Whether the CLR choice makes sense for Prothon really depends on what
the high-level goals are for Prothon. I think that the language is
very cool (as is the engine).  If gaining significant "market share"
is important, however, then having amazing libraries will be required
(not just 'good enough' libraries -- you need more than syntax to
convince people to switch languages in my experience -- you need to
allow people to do things that they can't do in their current
language, or, alternatively, allow them to do the same thing much more
easily).

I have no idea whether wx.NET or Qt# or GTK# will win the battle for
the open-source GUI library of choice.  If history is any guide, then
none will in fact win.  If it does the CLI integration well, Prothon
will have _free_ access to all of those, and let its users pick one
(and switch) according to their particular needs.

--david