Then I don't see how mono can claim .NET functionality. Namespaces are part of it...

As I said, I haven't used (i.e. developed) .NET at all; my opinion is based on classic VB only. I'll stop presuming VB.NET is the same, then, but I'm still unlikely to try it.

IMHO, there's room for three languages in the world. My picks are C (for systems programming), LISP (for applications programming), and Bourne shell (for scripting). Those are basically the 3 levels of programming you need, and there's not much point in using two different languages in the same level.

I'll actually go with java instead of LISP, out of practicality considerations. C#, as far as I have seen, is more-or-less equivalent to Java, so that's a sane choice, too. Anything else compiling to Java or MSIL bytecode is better than a split to something else, but if I don't like the source language, I'm not likely to try it; and if I do like it, I'm likely to ditch the "natural" language of the runtime, unless its bytecode is truly horrible. (Good to know that VB.NET's isn't; I still don't like it, but I'll not raise that speculative objection again.)

Really, though, I was probably out of line starting this discussion here in the first place; we should be celebrating WinForms, and the avoidance of natively cross-platform toolkits like GTK#, instead of flamewarring over VB. (Yes, I know WinForms support is needed to run existing apps as much as to discourage GTK# usage, but I can't help making comments.)

I gave up on C because it is unnecessarily cryptic. With VB.Net, Microsoft finally got a professional programming language right.

But I like Lisp, too. And Pascal. Had a blast with Logo years ago. Fortran was seductively easy to pick up. Cobol was tough but powerful once I got the hang of it. Now I'm trying to learn python and PHP.

And people use different languages because not every one fits all. I gravitate toward VB because I'm more writer/artist than mathematician and VB is more lingual than C, java, et al.

Well i installed the latest libraries which are remarkably the same version number... 1.9-1. I had previously thought the -1 was a rev and we'd see next build as 1.9-2 but i guess its just Mono 1.9.1.

I installed the libs but did not see the maemo-sharp 4.0 lib... all i found was the old maemo 2.2 lib. No biggie i dont intend to do much with that other than perhaps it would integrate winforms apps into taskbar.

I found tomboy but it has no menu for me so its not really usable.

I had previously gotten monocalendar to work and it is a visually impressive ui... those widgets however are running due to winforms and they are painted using gdi+. So theres no taskbar and some menu options crash... but its usable if you leave it at forefront and have 810 keyboard (no scim support).

Winforms also has the same crashes with 2.0 Visual Styles and Font Dialogs, etc.

So i guess this latest initiative by Everaldo is to bring forth the official maemo release of 1.9.1 now that its official in main branch. He is preparing to make official packages it looks like he may drop 1.0cil support? That part scares me since the most succes i have had with maemo-mono is using the 1.0 cil. If he only releases 2.0cil, my guess is that it will be useful only for gtk-sharp and console applications unless he follows though and fixes 2.0 bugs (meaning we would need to file bugs officially and hope they get fixed).

I've actually been meaning to try the Debian chroot which qole has pointed out is possible since the Debian testing archive has not only mono 1.9.1 but it has monodevelop Loads of stuff http://packages.debian.org/testing/devel/

Texrat, it all has become perfectly clear now! Your a vb guy :P

In the ranking of .NET language that falls just below LOLcode.net (thanks for that)... unfortunately lolcode.net doesnt work for me using these maemo mono libs (yes i tried).

I would think in theory vb.net should work if you dont include references to Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace (as mentioned) but you'd have to compile on desktop since theres no vb compiler package for maemo... and the vb compiler in mono itself seems to have been contributed by a community member and not done by novell ? So if i had to go the vb.net route i'd develop on desktop.

.Net is a great language... Visual Studio is a great development environment. It loses some appeal once you lose the vs.net designers, intellisense and integrated help, but the language itself imo is designed perfectly. The biggest sticking point with cross platform dotnet is the widget set, the most prevalent gtk would probably not fully support winforms functionality, thus you have the gdi+ implementation. Hopefully wpf/silverlight does not suffer the same 30+ second initialization delays which winforms has on maemo.

That's a Visual Studio thing though. If you do it all with the SDK compilers you might be able to leave out that namespace.

Update: yep, with the vbc command-line compiler I can leave it out. It now fails the same way as C# Yay!

command line on my default simple application:
vbc Form1.vb Form1.Designer.vb /m:Form1 /t:winexe /r:system.dll /r:system.windows.forms.dll

Aw, we gotta find a way to make lolcode work!

On 2005 yea, you'd have to set flatstyle on controls like buttons or it sigagrts... visual styles bug, styles were introduced in 2005, and its not liking Win32 Visual Style. VS2003 vb winforms should also work against 1.0 cil (soon to be obsoleted?)

We should file a bug report on the lolcode issue, that is a critical.

YES!!! It worked! Now I have to try something a tad more complicated

Snoo, man, document, document!

OK, not too much to document, but here's how to duplicate what I did.

1) Open VS 2008 (I assume 2005 is the same) and start a VB WinForms project. Keep to one form for now.

2) Put some controls on there. If you have buttons, change the Flatstyle to Flat. In code this is something like this, though you can do it in the GUI:

Me.btnSomething.FlatStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FlatStyle.Flat

If you don't do this, you'll get a SIGABRT crash when you run it.

3) Set the compilation target to .NET 2.0 - only necessary in 2008. Go in to project options, Compile, Advanced Compile options... the bottom shows you the Target Framework.

4) Now, save the project and exit Visual Studio.

5) Start the SDK command prompt and go to the project directory. Build using the vbc.exe compiler with all of the code files (you'll notice VS2008 splits a form into 2 files, 1 for layout and 1 for code, the above mentioned flatstyle line will be in the x.Designer.vb file). For example:

vbc Form1.vb Form1.Designer.vb

This will fail with no sub Main! You need to point to the startup class if you don't have a sub main. Now try this:

vbc Form1.vb Form1.Designer.vb /m:Form1

It builds, but pops open a command prompt window as it runs (on the desktop). Change your build line to this:

vbc Form1.vb Form1.Designer.vb /m:Form1 /t:winexe

You may want to get used to adding the library references, though it seems it includes the basics automatically:

vbc Form1.vb Form1.Designer.vb /m:Form1 /t:winexe /r:system.dll /r:system.windows.forms.dll

Another successful build! Copy the .exe to your maemo device and execute

$ mono Form1.exe

Wait a bit for it to open!