February 28, 2005

Check List for Aspiring Mono Windows Programmers

Here is a very quick entry that should be fleshed out further. I am working on this list/document for Windows programmers that want to do Mono from Windows. We will probably hand this sheet to the attendees of the Plano .NET User Group meeting day after tomorrow (Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005).

Posted by martinf at 07:56 AM | Comments (3)

February 21, 2005

MonoDoc in Win32

I am about to unplug and dive deep into the preparations for the upcoming Plano .NET User Group meeting (March 2, 2005). That means getting my eBay Mac ready (yes, Geoff, that one >:-S ).

However, I have one last update on the recent developments on Mono releases for Win32 and some of the work that has been going on with Gecko# and the Mozilla Gecko Rendering Engine (GRE).

I now have a new installer for the GRE and a new Mono 1.1.4 installer at Novell Forge that contains an experimental version of MonoDoc. Both the documentation as well as the MonoDoc internals are mostly derived from MonoDoc 1.0.5. Miguel de Icaza had pointed out that 1.0.6 is available but I did not get around to using that version this weekend.

Even if you decide to go without the GRE/Gecko# portion of MonoDoc you can still benefit from the Web version of the documentation that is now configured to run from your local machine.

I also created a quick and dirty tarball that has all of my Mono 1.1.4 Win32 monodoc directory contents so I could just copy it and run it on my SuSe 9.2 x86_64 machine to test for compatibility. The MonoDoc Gecko# Win32 browser.exe Linux screen shot that I am providing below came from that test.

Daniel Morgan will soon be blogging again on his blog's new home. I so look forward to this, since Daniel's work was one of the original inspirations for me to look into Mono!



I got a letter from Paquito that made me sob a little. At the same time it gave me a lot of hope for what the future could hold for us if we are so fortunate to have him comeback from Iraq.


Update

Apparently a big offensive is underway at Ramadi, where Paquito is stationed at.

Posted by martinf at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

Odisea 2005 - Gecko#

Yesterday I drove 176 miles and spent over 50 dollars between toll food and fuel. Yet...

I feel like breaking into a song. This would be "a la" Sound of Music/The Hills are Alive grandiose style - although, in my production is a bit more lantino to a Salsa beat that includes congas and timbales and we are the beach and people are dancing in bathing suits. "Wake up Paco, Wake up!"

Anyhow, it all began when I kidnaped Zac Bowling from his home in Richardson Texas and strapped him to a chair in my home at Fort Worth. Well, I gave him Pizza and soft drinks so it wasn't that bad. I was not going to let him go until we ended up with a reproducible Win32 installer for his custom GRE and an understanding of how and what was left to be done to get Gecko# 0.7 working in Windows.

I have to say that he came through with flying colors and for that, I owe him my gratitude.

Here is a few pictures of our mini Hackathon:

Hackathon 1
Hackathon2
Hackathon3
Hackathon4

I will be uploading the GRE for Gecko# installer into the Novell Forge project for Mono and Windows integration and later will produce three new installers:All three of these installers will have version 0.7 of gecko-sharp.dll and will be preconfigured in their respective GAC (Mono or MS .NET Framework)

I also will put out a quick Glade# application that will show how to use Gecko# while in Windows.

Posted by martinf at 05:33 PM | Comments (2)

February 02, 2005

Mono Evangelism - Part II

Here is an update about the upcoming Mono Presentation for the Plano .NET User Group that will take place here on Wednesday March 2, 2005. Erik Dasque, the Program Manager for Mono has now confirmed his attendance to the meeting!

Speaking of presentations I, never did put out the video for the January meeting of the Fort Worth .NET User Group. The reason for this omission is because my attempt to record the session resulted in a video production that is a mix of elements from Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Blair Witch Project and America's Funniest Home Videos. I think that the meeting went so well that my video would only taint folks' memory of the event.

My final note on the subject of Mono Evangelism is related to the first Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) sponsored web cast: Mono: Running .NET Applications on Linux (Level 200) presented by Joe Hummel, PhD.

Let me congratulate Dr. Hummel for his work on yesterday's presentation and thank Microsoft for opening their forum to show our implementation of .NET. Sure, he could have used a more modern Linux distro (how about Linux SuSe 9.2 or VPC friendlier SuSe 9.1), he SHOULD have used Mono 1.1.3 and our Managed Windows Forms. If you asked me though, I tip my hat to the guy because he pulled it off! Good Job!

CD and Mono Win32 Articles Coming Soon

I have decided to finally setup a mod_mono hosted page that will accept request for the Mono/Gtk# and Cygwin build toolkit that I have mentioned in the past. I will wait until we put out Mono 1.1.4. Some of my close friends have had access to early snapshots of this collection of works -- I have also redistribute the CD to both Ximian and at events were I have been asked to present.. For those of you that have expressed interest and that have given me your mailing address already I say: coming soon.

As I write this entry, Kevin Shockey and I have been preparing the beginning of a series of How To articles that will focus on doing Mono from Win32 but aimed at targeting Linux and Mac OS X. O'Reilly publications has manifested interest in publishing that content on their ONDotnet section. Ironically, it would seem that Paco is all about Win32, yet believe me when I tell you that I wish I could live almost solely in Linux - probably Ubuntu with an incredible close second being NLD. However, I took it upon myself to try to not complain about the status of Mono in Win32 and rather do whatever I could to make this a better Mono world even for Microsoft OS. After all, Windows users are also entitled access to the future champion in the Managed Framework arena.

It is my sincere hope that Kevin and I will do a good enough job at spawning the next Mono Win32 packager extraordinaire that will free me from this lonely and at times hard work. Don't anybody worry. I am not calling it quits. I will be here until I can truly put a banner over my home that reads: "Mission Accomplished". And then you know how that may not be the end either :)

I have some projects of my own that have been in the making for some time and some of my earlier experiments became projects that require maintenance and care.

Posted by martinf at 07:44 AM | Comments (3)