Re: Questions on cross-platform development...

["Arsalan Zaidi" <arsalan_zaidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Thanks everyone who responded.

Welcome.

> Also, Qt does not do Mac.  But that platform is dying anyway. ;-)

On the contrary, with OS X and the BSD core, it may actualy be easier to
port to the Mac than to Windows! :-)

We might see a resurgence yet.

> I've heard abt the C++ mangling too.  If memory serves me right... you
> have to run your code thorugh a pre-processor or something to mangle it
> before it can be compiled.  Arun, any input?
>

Another poster replied saying that he thought it worked fine... but I have
an instinctive and irrational dislike for stuff that's non-standards
compliant... unless it's very very good.

> > BTW, the only other cross-platform GUI that comes to mind is AWT/Swing.
But
> > that means you have to buy into the whole Sun Java wet-dream...
>
> Java might not be an option.  Too bloated, slow and feature-less.
>

You might want to reconsider. You haven't told us what you're doing but
unless it's simulating the weather or a port of Quake it may be fast enough.

Too bloated, -> OK, it is.

slow -> Not *that* slow

and feature-less. -> again depends on what you're doing...(so tell us
already!)

Again without actuall info on what you're doing I can only guess at possible
solutions, but you might want to check out Perl (as some one else
suggested), Python (which can be compiled, I think) or rethink Java.

Real life example, Vignette's presentation layer (and maybe some of the
internals) run on Java. It's very spiffy and runs quite fast...

>
> > GTK is being worked on as well, but it's been a while since I looked it
up.
>
> I've looked at that.  It is basically porting GTK+ to Win.  No promises
> are being made by the porter.
>

Damn. I quite like it.

Here's the three choices before you...

1) You can go for a cross-platform thingy like Java or Perl and save
yourself a lot of work. You lose some performace, but the gains may be worth
it.

2) You could go for a cross platform windowing kit, but you'll still
probably have to port the application code. Displaying shiny widgets isn't
all that a program's supposed to do.

3) Design you program from the ground up to be easily portable with a clear
seperation between presentation and application logic. Then develop for each
platform you're interested in. Lot's of work and tedious code writing, but
if the design's clean, it may actually end up being the best solution.

Best of luck and do tell us what you finally pick. This is something I
expect to face someday too...

--Arsalan.