3 System.Windows.Forms is currently being implemented using the
4 Win32 API, we will be using <a
5 href="http://www.winehq.com">WineLib</a> on Unix systems to
8 This means that those who want to contribute to the effort can
9 develop and test classes today using Windows and P/Invoke
10 calls to Win32 and we will then just run the result on Unix.
12 In terms of integrating visually with the desktop, we are
13 hoping to contribute to the Wine project an mechanism to make
14 it use the Gtk+ themes on X11 and Cocoa on MacOS to render the
15 widgets, and get the native look and feel on each of these
18 There are no current plans to support embedded devices, but
19 Gtk/FrameBuffer is an option. If you have suggestions or
20 recommendations, please let us <a
21 href="mailto:mono-hackers-list@ximian.com">let us know</a>
25 The Winforms effort is being coordinated in the <a
26 href="mailto:mono-winforms-list@ximian.com:.com">mono-winforms-list@ximian.com</a>.
27 If you are interested in helping out with this effort,
28 subscribe to it by sending an email message to <a
29 href="mailto:mono-winforms-list-request@ximian.com:.com">mono-winforms-list-request@ximian.com</a>.
31 If you want to help, you can start by writing a control and
32 testing it with Windows today (or you can also try to build
33 the existing library on Linux, but this is a bit more
36 See the file mcs/class/System.Windows.Forms/CheckOutList for
37 details on who is working on which class.
39 Please read the README document in the
40 System.Windows.Forms/WINElib directory for details about how
41 to build the Windows.Forms support for Mono.
45 Using existing libraries to implement some of the
46 functionality required:
49 * gdk-pixbuf is a generic image loader that loads an image
50 and leaves it into an RGB buffer. It hides all the details
51 about what image file format is being loaded.
53 * Libart is a general framework for rendering RGB/RGBA
54 buffers into RGB buffers and rendering postscript-like paths into
58 We want to use gdk-pixbuf as the image loader for the image
59 classes, and then we need operations to render that into the
60 windowing system (Gtk+, MacOS, etc). But notice how there is
61 very little dependnecies in Gdk-pixbuf on gtk, and libart has
64 They are pretty independent from a windowing system
65 (gdk-pixbuf comes with some "helper" routines for rendering
66 data into a pixmap and to load pixmaps into RGB buffers).
68 A few things to keep in mind:
72 * gdk-pixbuf can be used to load images for Gtk+,
73 MacOS X and Windows, it should be pretty portable,
74 although we might need in the future to back-port
75 some new features from Gtk head.
77 * Libart is probably only going to be used with X11,
78 as the MacOS X provides the same features in Quartz,
79 and Win32 *probably* has that in GDI+. If not, we
80 should use libart in Win32 as well (or for older
87 System.Drawing (assembly directory)
89 Common code for "Blah"
90 Stubs for "Blah" to ease ports.
94 Gtk ports of "System.Drawing.Blah"
97 MacOS ports of "System.Drawing.Blah"
100 Win32 ports of "System.Drawing.Blah"
103 Notice that there is a proof of concept Gtk-backend for
104 Windows.Forms, but nobody is working on it, and for the
105 reasons stated before it is not a long term strategy.
109 I believe that the graphics contexts that are used to render
110 can accept either libart-like rendering operations and
111 X11-like rendering operations. This complicates matters, but
112 I am not sure. Someone needs to investigate this.
116 Although the original plans were to use Gtk on X and Cocoa on
117 MacOS X, it would be very hard to emulate the event model in
118 which some Winforms applications depend, and it would be very
119 hard to implement the Wndproc method.