Porting WPF to Cocoa (and/or vice-versa)

Question

I am in the beginning stages of creating software for a mISV-to-be. The program is a desktop application and in the long run I want to have a native version for both Windows and OS X (I have a looked at various cross-platform APIs, and none of them meet my needs). Initially though, I don't think it makes sense to develop for two platforms at once. With that in mind, I have been looking at WPF for Windows and Cocoa for OS X, and they seem similar.

Has anyone had experience porting one to the other? Are there particular techniques/paradigms to follow that will make porting easier? Ignoring business considerations, would you recommend developing on one of them first?

Answer 1

Well. Once you've written an app for Cocoa, it is possible to port it to Windows. This could be done using gnustep or Cocotron.

If you do it the other way, WINE is meant to make porting easier.

I would rather write the OSX version first. This is because Windows users have no clear idea what they want an application to look like. In my experience, they are quite able to suffer through all kinds of user interfaces. Consistency has little value to them. Since there is no common agreement, what a Windows app should look like, nothing stops Windows users from actually liking OSX designs, and they even frequently do. iTunes for windows looks like a very typical OSX app and you hear very few complaints that it would not be enough Windows-ish.

Going the other direction, this is not true. OSX users have a clear preference for Cocoa apps and very little tolerance for, as an example, things like GIMP or Inkscape which work under OSX just as well as anywhere else, but look plainly ugly to the OSX trained eye.