[sword-devel] Porting to MS .NET framework

[John Baima]

At 01:38 PM 6/5/2003 -0400, David wrote:
>On Thursday 05 June 2003 01:05 pm, John Baima wrote:
> > Have you checked Mono (www.go-mono.com) ? The .NET platform, not just C#,
> > solves a lot of problems and while there are some real issues with it today
> > (e.g., no Palm OS), I think that it will prove to be a very popular
> > environment in the years to come and it is not something that should be
> > dismissed lightly.
>
>In case you missed what I said earlier, windows is the only platform with a
>mature .NET implementation.

No, David, I did not miss what you said. In fact, I quoted it and you 
deleted it. You said, "Except C# isn't as portable as C++. The C# linux 
compilers are still very very
much in beta and aren't close to fully functional last I checked. And I don't
know of a mac C# compiler at all." and that is just not so. If you had said 
.NET, I would have agreed with you although it is maturing fast.


>Furthermore, unless Microsoft itself ports .NET
>to other platforms there will very nearly always exist the issues of what
>happens when MS starts enforcing it's patents.

This is covered in the Mono faq.

>Also to be portable you have
>to run on more than just Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X

Right, I agree with that.


>And yes I've looked at the Mono project and it's not finished yet. And while
>.NET I'm sure has some sort of benefit I would make sure that it won't fall
>by the wayside before jumping in with both feet. From what I've seen of the
>Windows longhorn previews, there are new windows frameworks coming out that
>aren't even compatible with win32 and I didn't even see any mention of .NET
>in the preview article I read.

Well, MS has fully committed to .NET. To say anything else is silly.


>And back to portability, the current sword
>library compiles on at least both linux and windows *WITHOUT* changing any of
>the code. Essentially on those two platforms you don't have to do any sort of
>porting at all and changing things if you're in linux shouldn't break things
>in windows.

That's all well and good, but the .NET assemblies are vastly superior to 
the old DLL or COM paradigm and .NET allows you to mix and match objects 
written in different languages and it provides binary compatibility to any 
.NET supported OS. And that list of OS's will grow over the next year. I 
understand that you are not a fan of MS. I left MS development tools in 
1984 and I've not looked back. Until now. .NET is a cool idea and it will 
be successful.


-John Baima