Writing cross-platform application with a complex GUI

Question

I’d like to develop an application with a complex GUI (combobox with animation, charts with spline, transparent layers, …). I have good experience with C# 2.0 and I’m studying WPF, but I read that, unfortunately, there is no plan to port WPF to Mono.

• If I stick with C# and create custom GUI controls using OpenGL (via OpenTK), I feel it will be a hard work (integration with GTK#, debugging, hard to use to design forms).

• I can use Java (with JOGL), but I’m not very skilled with it, and I don’t know about performance issues.

• Last option is C++, but I have to do a big revision (years since last time I used it), and I find it hard to develop GUI and portable applications in C++. (Maybe I’m wrong! Still, I’m quite afraid to develop such complex application with this language.)

What is your advice? Had I better choose C# + OpenTK, Java + JOGL, or return to C++?

Answer 1

I would go with Qt. Take a look at http://qt.nokia.com/products/ . If you are afraid of C++ (but there is no reason to be afraid of it), you can try with Java Swing. I think that those are the best options to go with multi platform desktop GUI development.

Answer 2

I would suggest Mono and GTK#. Developing apps with .Net is far more effective than doing it in C++ vanilla. Sure, you have to stick with C# 3.0 and .Net 2.0 (some features from 3.5 is implemented, like LINQ). But it still gives you a lot more than C++ with, for instance QT, would give you.