For those interested in portablity between Mono and .NET, the biggest issue you will have is windows and controls. On mono there has been work on GTK# which is a managed wrapper of the GTK+ windowing widgets often used to wite gui apps on Linux. I have spent lots of time trying to get around using GTK# on Windows with .NEWT so that I can use it instead of the normal System.Windows.Forms to make it easier to port my .NET windows developed stuff over to Linux.

Finally I figured out the steps and some example code to create a window, buttons, textbox and adding text to textbox from a button click. Simple stuff really, but enough to get started in understanding using GTK.

Here are the step you need to do first to use them.

1) Install Cygwin - www.cygwin.com
2) Install GTK+ runtimes - http://www.dropline.net/gtk/download.php
3) Install GTK# - http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/g...p.exe?download
4) Right click My Computer. Properties. Click Advanced tab. Goto Environment variables and change your path variable to include the following

a) path_you_installed_cygwin\bin
b) path_you_installed_gtk+\lib
c) path_you_installed_gtk#

Now for an example

VB Code:
  1. Imports System

  2. Imports Gtk

  3. Imports GtkSharp

  4.  
  5. Public Module ToggleButtons

  6.     Dim tb As Gtk.TextView

  7.     Dim buffer As Gtk.TextBuffer

  8.  
  9.     Sub OnDeleteEvent(ByVal obj As Object, ByVal args As DeleteEventArgs)

  10.  
  11.         Application.Quit()

  12.  
  13.     End Sub

  14.  
  15.     Sub OnExitButtonEvent(ByVal obj As Object, ByVal args As EventArgs)

  16.  
  17.         Application.Quit()

  18.  
  19.     End Sub

  20.  
  21.     Sub OnClick(ByVal obj As Object, ByVal args As EventArgs)

  22.         ' Create a new buffer object

  23.         buffer = New Gtk.TextBuffer(System.IntPtr.Zero)

  24.         ' Set the buffer to point to the textviews buffer

  25.         buffer = tb.Buffer

  26.         ' Set text to display

  27.         buffer.SetText("hey there")

  28.     End Sub

  29.  
  30.     Public Sub Main()

  31.  
  32.         Application.Init() ' pre initialization

  33.  
  34.         Dim window As Window = New Window("Testing Widgets") ' Declaring a new window

  35.         AddHandler window.DeleteEvent, AddressOf OnDeleteEvent

  36.         window.BorderWidth = Convert.ToUInt32(0)

  37.  
  38.         Dim box1 As VBox = New VBox(False, 10) ' Creatinga child container for window to hold

  39.         ' Note that the window object can only hold 1 child. So we use the Boxes to hold our main widegts

  40.         window.Add(box1)

  41.         box1.Show()

  42.  
  43.         ' Create a button with a Clicked event wired up

  44.         Dim btnClick As Button = New Button("Click to add text to textview!")

  45.         AddHandler btnClick.Clicked, AddressOf OnClick

  46.         box1.PackStart(btnClick, True, True, Convert.ToUInt32(0)) ' Add it to the Box container we creates

  47.         btnClick.Show() ' make it visible

  48.  
  49.         Dim separator As HSeparator = New HSeparator() ' horizontal seperator

  50.         box1.PackStart(separator, False, True, Convert.ToUInt32(0))

  51.         separator.Show()

  52.  
  53.         ' Create a quit button

  54.         Dim btnQuit As Button = New Button("Quit")

  55.         AddHandler btnQuit.Clicked, AddressOf OnExitButtonEvent

  56.         box1.PackStart(btnQuit, True, True, Convert.ToUInt32(0))

  57.  
  58.         tb = New Gtk.TextView()

  59.         tb.SetSizeRequest(100, 100)

  60.         box1.PackStart(tb, True, True, Convert.ToUInt32(0))

  61.         btnQuit.CanDefault = True ' Make quit button default

  62.         btnQuit.GrabDefault()

  63.         btnQuit.Show()

  64.  
  65.         window.ShowAll() ' Display the child to window object

  66.         Application.Run() ' Run the application

  67.     End Sub

  68.  
  69. End Module

Add reference to the 3 follwoing dll's in the gtk# dir
atk-sharp
glib-sharp
gtk-sharp

Now build and run the built exe. For some reason it doesnt work by just hiting F5 and running it in the IDE. Nopt sure why yet.

If everything was done right, you should have a GTK based window come up.

Now this code SHOULD compile and work using mono bas on Linux as well. I will test this once I get my Linux system back up.

If nothing else, this is something new to play with.
Enjoy