search

mono / md-website

MonoDevelop WebSite
79 stars 87 forks source link

Could you please provide a WinForms designer in MonoDevelop? #160

Open zdaccount opened 1 year ago

zdaccount commented 1 year ago

Could you please provide a WinForms designer in MonoDevelop?

Now, MonoDevelop does not have a WinForms designer, and WinForms files can only be edited manually (that is, by code).

According to the web page "https://www.mono-project.com/archived/winforms_designer/", there is an unfinished WinForms designer. It seems that this designer is close to being finished.

That web page says "The main stumble point is the lack of true Control transparency (WS_EX_TRANSPARENT), which is not yet supported by the MWF X11 backend, but is required for a proper Drag and Drop and other interaction (snap lines, etc) on the design service." But it seems that, this is not a big problem. Maybe things can be simplified. For example, when doing Drag and Drop, the designer may simply show a "placeholder" image instead of showing the actual control. For snap lines, maybe the designer can draw them manually, or simply do not show them. The Form designer of Visual Basic 6.0 does not have snap lines at all, but it is still very useful.

Besides this, it may need some efforts to put this designer into MonoDevelop. Now it seems that this designer is standalone.

tpokorra commented 1 year ago

@zdaccount I believe the MonoDevelop project is dead: https://github.com/mono/monodevelop "This project has not been built nor maintained since January 2020 and has been archived"

zdaccount commented 1 year ago

Uh, it is never dead. The code is always there. We can still work on it.

lextm commented 1 year ago

Uh, it is never dead. The code is always there. We can still work on it.

While that might be true, you'd better pay attention to what defines "we" and "the code".

Currently there is only a tiny group of developers trying to keep MonoDevelop alive, https://github.com/dotdevelop/dotdevelop but their work scope is much smaller, and Mono WinForms is excluded.

zdaccount commented 1 year ago

Uh, it is never dead. The code is always there. We can still work on it.

While that might be true, you'd better pay attention to what defines "we" and "the code".

Currently there is only a tiny group of developers trying to keep MonoDevelop alive, https://github.com/dotdevelop/dotdevelop but their work scope is much smaller, and Mono WinForms is excluded.

Thanks for your information.

I am just seeking help on this. I still hope that this will be done. Doing this may be beyond my ability, so I hope that someone will work on this.