Re: It is time for me to take a decision.
Re: It is time for me to take a decision.
- Subject: Re: It is time for me to take a decision.
- From: James Brasure <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 01:54:02 -0600
Hi Bertrand,
Cocoa only exists on the Mac, and Apple has not made any announcements
that it will ever be ported to Windows. Using cross-platform frameworks
like Qt is an alternative, but from my experience frameworks like that
create almost as many problems as they solve. You end up working around
platform differences much of the time. There always seems to be
trade-offs. Plus you run the risk of the framework not being supported
in the future, and then you're stuck with a dead end project. (Just ask
anyone who used the Mac version of MFC several years back!)
I've written a lot of cross-platform applications, and my favorite
technique is to create the user interface on each platform using native
code. Then encapsulate the low-level logic of your program in
cross-platform C or C++ code. Using this technique you can frequently
share about 70% of your code between platforms. Don't get me
wrong...this isn't easy or trivial. It's just the best way that I've
found to do things.
If you use this technique, then Cocoa should work great. After all, if
your UI code will be different on each platform, then you might as well
use Cocoa on the Mac since it's so powerful. I haven't tried this yet,
but I plan to soon. There is one caveat: Right now you can't mix C++ and
Cocoa in the same source file. You can mix it with C, but not C++. Apple
has stated that they are working on an Objective C++ compiler that will
fix this problem. Some rumors suggest that it might be ready with Mac OS
10.1, but then again those are just rumors.
One more thought. RealBasic will let you create cross-platform
applications. If you think your project could be built using Basic, then
you should give that a try. Visit "www.realbasic.com".
I hope this helps,
James Brasure
On Tuesday, August 7, 2001, at 01:28 PM, cocoa-dev-
email@hidden wrote:
Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 19:40:08 +0200
Subject: It is time for me to take a decision.
From: Bertrand Mansion <email@hidden>
To: <email@hidden>
I am wondering if Cocoa is portable to Microsoft Windows ?
Somewhere I found information about Yellow Box which was part of
WebObjects
and Rhapsody but it seems to be discountinued. How difficult is it now
to
port Cocoa apps to Windows ? Do you think there are plans to make an
API for
Windows ?
Bertrand Mansion