Anteriormente comente que desarrollaría una versión para el Iphone 3G y desde luego estoy trabajando en ello..por lo que dejo la siguiente imagen como muestra:

easyRAE para Iphone usa MonoTouch

La idea es liberar los binarios junto con el código fuente para Linux y al mismo tiempo para el Iphone.

Up until about 6 months ago I was a Windows only developer. I thought it would be cool to mess with other operating systems and languages but it just wasn’t worth the time. I’m one of those devs that is more interested in creating software than learning new ways to create new software. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always impressed with those people that knows 14 different languages on 3 different operating systems — but I just don’t aspire to be that guy.

However, Mono has really opened up opportunities for me that weren’t available before. If you don’t know what it is, the easiest way to describe it is .NET everywhere. Write something in .NET and use it on Windows, Mac or Linux.

Mono doesn’t just apply to desktop apps either. You can actually write WebForms or MVC apps as well. Heck, there is even a cross platform Silverlight called Moonlight. Yes, it really is that awesome.

Another advantage to Mono is that you can use free operating systems to build a web server but still use the language and framework that you are used to. This is especially handy if you don’t have the budget to pay for Windows and MSSQL licences to get a website off the ground. Keep in mind that Microsoft did create the awesome BizSpark program which helps eliminate the costs but not indefinitely.

Since Mono works anywhere, you can technically use any system you want to start developing, but if you’re like me, a strictly Windows developer, then I recommend that you use an alternate operating system. Messing with a new operating system can be fun but the real advantage to this is you get a chance to work with something new that you might end up using in the future (for example, MySQL).

Below are a few links that can get you started…

• Mono: Information about Mono and the different apps available for it. (You might not use this page for installation though…)
• Wubi – Ubuntu Installer: As good as VirtualBox is, Wubi installs Ubuntu onto your computer without requiring that you format your computer to create additional partitions. Not only that, but Wubi installs Ubuntu in such a way that you still have access to your primary OS’es files – awesome! (thanks to @lazycoder)
• Mono Develop: Awesome, Open Source IDE that lets you easily write and test Mono code. I won’t say it is as good as Visual Studio but it is really quite good.
• Installing Software On Ubuntu: This will probably be the weirdest part for a Windows developer. This page has some good information to get you started.

In the development of Piculet, my new hobbie project, i’ve had to implement the oAuth Authorization process. The Twitter App documentation gives you a rough sketch of how to do this, and the services spec points you off to the official oAuth Specification.

Let’s just say it’s a bit confusing. After surfing the web i’ve found some example code and a class with oAuth utility methods which i used in the implementation see external links at the end.

I advise you read and examine the code mentioned in the article here. The small  application the author provides will give you some insight on how it all works and how you can achieve the oAuth calls. Unfortunally this isn’t explained in the article itself hence this post.

Authorization process

The authorization process, according to twitter is :

The application uses oauth/request_token to obtain a request token from twitter.com.

The application directs the user to oauth/authorize on twitter.com.

After obtaining approval from the user, a prompt on twitter.com will display a 7 digit PIN.

The user is instructed to copy this PIN and return to the appliction.

The application will prompt the user to enter the PIN from step 4.

The application uses the PIN as the value for the oauth_verifier parameter in a call to

oauth/access_token which will verify the PIN and exchange a request_token for an access_token.

Twitter will return an access_token for the application to generate subsequent OAuth signatures.

Seems simple enough.

Signing oAuth Requests

When you register your application with twitter it gives you a consumer key that identifies your application and a consumer secret which will be used to generate your oAuth signature. This is where i bungled up, at first i thought the consumer key would be the signature to use, lets just say i should’ve read the oAuth Spec first.

Let’s take the request token call as an example. In order to obtain the request token for your application you will need to generate the following :

1. Signature
2. Nonce
3. Timestamp

The oAuthBase class mentioned above will help you with this. All you need to do is provide it with your consumer key and secret, the url your calling in this case that would be : http://twitter.com/oauth/requet_token and the queryString – in this case this is empty
All you need to do is call the method  GenerateSignature to generate your signature and prepare your url.
The following code generates the url to call request_token :

    OAuth.OAuthBase oAuth = new OAuth.OAuthBase();
    string queryString="";
    string tstamp=oAuth.GenerateTimeStamp();
    string sig = oAuth.GenerateSignature(new Uri(http://twitter.com/oauth/requet_token),
                                     consumerKey, consumerSecret,,null, null,"GET",tstamp ,nonce,
                                     out url, out queryString);
    queryString += "&oauth_signature=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sig);
    return url+"?"+queryString;

Now all you need to do is call that url and get your request_token.

All calls from here on end can be signed in the same manner. Only difference is that after the authorization procedure you get an access token, which you will need to provide  the GenerateSignature method in order to sign your urls.

Sidenote on Using oAuthBase

I ran into a problem when trying to use the oAuthBase class with mono and monodevelop.

Problem came from the compiler not finding the HttpUtility anywhere. This is a class that is inside the System.Web namespace. I solved this by adding System.Web to the project references.

External Links

• Coding the Wheel – http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/codingthetweet
• Twitter API – http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Authentication
• oAuth Spec - http://oauth.net/core/1.0
• Beginner’s Guide to OAuth- http://www.hueniverse.com/hueniverse/2007/10/beginners-guide.html
• oAuthBase Class - http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/csharp/OAuthBase.cs

I’ve always been envious of Java developers since they could essentially write their code and then run it on any device. It might not be a perfect translation each time, but its still much better than what a pure Windows dev could put together.

I recently started doing some iPhone development and decided to investigate MonoTouch. I downloaded the a copy of MonoDevelop (which is still in beta at this time) and installed it. After starting up the application I was shocked to see what came up…

Uh… what? Wow! Is this for real? This really looks pretty nice!

Not What You’d Expect

When you first mess with the IDE you’ll be pleased to see it works just like you’d hope. Intellisense is quick and accurate; Syntax highlighting works as you would expect; Believe me when I say, it is just that impressive.

But having a pretty IDE is nice but it doesn’t mean anything if the language doesn’t work the way you need it to. Honestly, I figured it had to be some sort of watered-down version of the same .NET C# language that I work with every day. The first thing I did was hack out something that was certain to fail… but…

Incredible! Granted this isn’t that hard of code, who would have thought so much was already available!

And that isn’t all – You have LINQ support, Generics… heck, even ASP.NET MVC is already packed in here!!

Not only that, but check out this “little” dialog. I’m sure it doesn’t mean much…

If I’m reading this correctly, we can import existing .NET assemblies – How awesome would that be! (but I’m just guessing here… I’ll test it later…)

See It To Believe It

Mono and MonoDevelop are going to open up a lot of existing C#/Windows devs to an entirely new world. Don’t just take my word for it though — try it out for yourself. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, download a copy of VirtualBox and setup a virtual instance of another OS and prepare to be impressed.

Great job Mono Team! I think the benefits of .NET cross-platform development are yet to be realized!

I was trying to get a MonoDevelop MVC application up and running and came across this little snag.The error was:

"The view 'Index' or its master could not be found"

The Index.aspx view existed, but it was linked to a MasterPage like this:

<%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/MasterPage.master" %>

I added this to the Web.config file:

<pages pageBaseType="System.Web.UI.Page">

And the issue went away.

The Mono Team has now announced the first beta release of the new version (2.2) of their development tool Mono Develop. As the main motive of the Mono Framework is to provide as cross platform open-source implementation of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the same standard as .NET, this version of MonoDevelop also supports more platforms than previous versions. In this up-coming release MonoDevelop also supports Windows.  So now you can develop .NET applications with MonoDevelop on any platform you want. Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. No need to switch to another system just stick with the one you feel comfortable with.

MonoDevelop now has an integrated debugger support, improved refactoring tools, code templates and on the fly formatting. Via add-ins you can now create ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight applications directly in MonoDevelop.

With MonoDevelop you can develop applications that run on various platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and iPhone. You can build graphical user interfaces using Stetic, an open-source visual designer for the cross platform GTK library via GTK#

Good work all you contributors out there!

MonoDevelop on Windows 

MonoDevelop on Mac OS X 

Read more:

• http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Sep-09.html
• http://monodevelop.com/index.php?title=Download/What%27s_new_in_MonoDevelop_2.2

See fullsize image

Yesterday i found a screen cast about my PDF merge application Couturier on YouTube, which is really cool

gotbletu uploaded the video on YouTube a couple of days ago.
In this video you can see how to use Couturier to merge multiple PDF files and images into one single PDF document. I think the video is very helpful to show how Couturier works and to get a first impression about this app, thus I provided a direct link on Couturier’s homepage.

I hope you like it too.

Many thanks to gotbletu for this screencast.

El lenguaje de programación Vala (Un post mio en los foros de programación x)

Vala es un nuevo (2006) lenguaje de programación muy parecido a C# y Java, por lo que he leído no es multiplataforma solo funciona en Linux.  Al parecer muchos de los programadores de Gnome están cansados de programar aplicaciones grandes en C, por que muchos dicen que son un dolor de cabeza. Pero parece que los desarrolladores de Gnome prefieren Python un lenguaje interpretado en ves de C. El lenguaje Vala es tan avanzado como C# y además con el puedes generar código C. Usando una sintaxis:

Y sin la bandera “-C” te genera el ejecutable solamente.

Genera código en C y luego un ejecutable de C. Esto es interesante por que un programa que no usa una maquina virtual es mas rápido que los que la usan como C# o Java.

Veamos un programa escrito en Vala:

Se compila con:

Si alguien programa una aplicación solamente para Linux con algunas librerías, yo les recomendaría Vala como lenguaje de programación. Por que recordemos que Vala es un lenguaje muy avanzado le hace el peso a C# y a cualquier otro lenguaje (por lo que he leído).

A mi me gustaría que se mezclara este lenguaje con MonoDevelop para tener ejecutables en Mono (con maquina virtual) y en Linux (en nativo). Sería interesante, pero al final es un problema religioso entre comunidades distintas. Por que nadie quiere programar en C# por que fue creado por Microsoft y bla, bla, bla.

Algunos link:
http://knocte.blogspot.com/2007/08/vala-lo-mejor-de-los-dos-mundos-c-c.html
http://www.glib.org.mx/article.php?story=20090118173114777&mode=print

En ingles:
http://live.gnome.org/Vala

Esta es la primera en una serie de puestos a comentar sobre los resultados de los estudiantes que han contribuido al Mono, como parte del Google Summer of Code.

Laurent DeBacker completó su widget Cintas para Gtk #:

.También puede ver el widget en acción en el siguiente screencast:Ribbons-final.ogg

Laurent SoC envió su último informe sobre la situación de this blog entry

Laurent necesita una mención especial, ya que también documentó esta clase.

My hope for this widget would be: Mi esperanza para este artilugio sería:

• Para mover el widget a Mono del repositorio SVN desde el verano de Código temporal repositorio.
• Para iniciar el embalaje para los desarrolladores para comenzar a utilizar y ofrecer paquetes para múltiples distribuciones.
• Recibe las solicitudes para empezar a utilizar la cinta. ¿Estoy loco pensar que MonoDevelop podrían aprovechar de la mejor cinta para exponer la amplia funcionalidad que tiene?
  Nadie ha utilizado la cinta para un IDE antes.Esto tiene un gran potencial.

Update2: Laurent seguidas de a proposal that he had drafted to improve MonoDevelop con la cinta de IU. ¡Qué graciosa coincidencia!

Actualización: Alan encontrar algunas buenas aplicaciones anteriores de arte que utilizan la cinta-como el interfaz:

• DreamWeaver
• Bluefish
• Blender

Alan publicadas en algunos blogs hace unos meses una mejor captura de pantalla. If you own that blog, and remember it, please post the link. Si usted es dueño de ese blog, y recuerde que, por favor, enviar el enlace.

Condivisibile o meno, mi sento in dovere di segnalare un’attenta, ma leggera-quanto-basta, analisi dell’universo di applicativi e risorse (dalla riproduzione video all’editing, dalla chat ai giochi, dalla base a temi e font) che circondano l’utente linux e che vengono snobbati dalle maggiori distro causa: coerenza con le linee-guida, etica, paura ( e di che? ), difesa di cause perse. (e chi più ne ha…)

Analisi che ha portato a definire quella che viene utopicamente descritta come la distribuzione linux perfetta e che tralasciando deliri di onnipotenza, se me lo permettete, dà comunque spunti notevoli a riflessioni e, più frivolamente, dà tante nuove idee su cosa installare per passare in allegria una mattinata buona (Hedgewars per quanto mi riguarda).

Ecco l’articolo: The Perfect Linux Distro

Just to let you know that MonoDevelop’s Autotools deployment projects now allow you to add specific switch for the configure script.

Let’s say for instance that you want to enable at compile time a specific feature in your project. Now what you can do is add a switch to your deployment project which will be turned in something like --enable-super-feature on configure side (i.e. you will be able to run configure like ./configure --enable-super-feature).

This will actually define (as in #define) a symbol that you can use with #if … #endif constructs in your code to activate your specific feature.

Since we are at it, here is a little screenie :

I will add support asap for simple makefile projects. The UI is also probably a bit rough, if there are any usability expert out of there I will gladly accept any sensible criticism .

Couturier has a brand new website now. Check it out
http://sites.google.com/site/couturierapp/

Since I want to see the upcomming features in Monodevelop I couldn’t resist to take a look on the Monodevelop in the svn repository. There’s definitely some improvements, and it’s a step up from 2.0 even though there’s still some way.

Before telling about what it has to offer, I’ll just make an disclaimer. This isn’t their stable release, what I describe here most likely isn’t final, and although I don’t find it likely, it might be removed again.

That said, the first thing I found is that it now understands the keywords in sql. It also offers me to execute the SQL when working with the file. Although it doesn’t do autocompletion or syntax control the current structure, it’s still a huge improvement. For comparison in the old version you had to import and export the sql all the time to work with sql in files, which could become a nightmare if you use a lot of sql.

There’s a minor but very useful bugfix. When pressing alt+up/down to move a line of code up and down, the old version often did miscalculations, resulting in the cursor ending up weird places, this seems to have been fixed. Although it’s a minor bug it has caused a lot of annoyance for me.

The autofolding of “minimized” tool areas seems to have improved.

Seems that the current Monodevelop supports testing with more mono environments, if they are installed (haven’t tested it), which might come in handy, eg. when you wish to deploy for platforms like Ubuntu, which is a bit behind.

Since I haven’t worked for long with it this list of things I found is most likely incomplete, but as a sidenote I get the feel that it runs somewhat more smoothly than its predecessor, although this could be due the fact that I run 2.0 on Ubuntu.

Drag and drop en MonoDevelop

Hace tiempo estuve buscando pero no encontré documentación en español acerca del Drag And Drop (arrastrar y soltar) en Gtk-Sharp. Al final, consiente de los ejemplo que trae Gtk-Sharp no había encontrado uno que tratase el Drag And Drop, pero después de un tiempo lo volví a revisar y existe un ejemplo que esta en: /usr/share/gtk-sharp2-examples/TestDnd.cs (teniendo instalado Gtk-Sharp). La verdad es que me considero novato en el mundo de Mono y encontré que el ejemplo era demasiado complejo para mi asi que lo acorte, rescate las partes mas importantes del código y elimine lo no tan importante, lo adapte para que funcione en MonoDevelop. Si han leido mi blog sabrán de mi filosofía de los ejemplos, creo que estos deben ser cortos para explicar cosas esenciales.

En el ejemplo GtkDragAndDrop hay solo una ventana que contiene un botón con un label, para mostrar como se arrastra un botón a un label.

Lo mas importante:

…

Table table;

Label label;

Button button;

table = new Table (1, 2, false);

this.Add (table);

label = new Label (“Drop Here\n”);

// Prototipo: static void DestSet (Widget widget,

// DestDefaults flags, TargetEntry[] targets,

// Gdk.DragAction actions)

Gtk.Drag.DestSet (label, DestDefaults.All, target_table,

DragAction.Copy | DragAction.Move);

// Evento que recibe el boton “button”, para arrastrarlo hacia

// el label “label”

label.DragDataReceived += new DragDataReceivedHandler

(HandleLabelDragDataReceived);

// Posicionar a “label”

table.Attach (label, 0, 1, 0, 1, AttachOptions.Expand |

AttachOptions.Fill, AttachOptions.Expand |

AttachOptions.Fill, 0, 0);

button = new Button (“Drag Here\n”);

// Prototipo: SourceSet(Widget, Gdk.ModifierType, TargetEntry[], Gdk.DragAction)

Gtk.Drag.SourceSet (button, Gdk.ModifierType.Button1Mask |

Gdk.ModifierType.Button3Mask, Table table;

Label label;

Button button;

table = new Table (1, 2, false);

this.Add (table);

label = new Label (“Drop Here\n”);

// Prototipo: static void DestSet (Widget widget,

// DestDefaults flags, TargetEntry[] targets,

// Gdk.DragAction actions)

Gtk.Drag.DestSet (label, DestDefaults.All, target_table,

DragAction.Copy | DragAction.Move);

// Evento que recibe el boton “button”, para arrastrarlo hacia

// el label “label”

label.DragDataReceived += new DragDataReceivedHandler

(HandleLabelDragDataReceived);

// Posicionar a “label”

table.Attach (label, 0, 1, 0, 1, AttachOptions.Expand |

AttachOptions.Fill, AttachOptions.Expand |

AttachOptions.Fill, 0, 0);

button = new Button (“Drag Here\n”);

// Prototipo: SourceSet(Widget, Gdk.ModifierType, TargetEntry[], Gdk.DragAction)

Gtk.Drag.SourceSet (button, Gdk.ModifierType.Button1Mask |

Gdk.ModifierType.Button3Mask,

target_table, DragAction.Copy | DragAction.Move);

// Posiciona a “buton”

table.Attach (button, 0, 1, 1, 2,

AttachOptions.Expand | AttachOptions.Fill,

AttachOptions.Expand | AttachOptions.Fill, 0, 0);

// Conecta el evento que envia un dato desde “button”

button.DragDataGet += new DragDataGetHandler (HandleSourceDragDataGet);

this.ShowAll();

Build ();

target_table, DragAction.Copy | DragAction.Move);

// Posiciona a “buton”

table.Attach (button, 0, 1, 1, 2,

AttachOptions.Expand | AttachOptions.Fill,

AttachOptions.Expand | AttachOptions.Fill, 0, 0);

// Conecta el evento que envia un dato desde “button”

button.DragDataGet += new DragDataGetHandler (HandleSourceDragDataGet);

this.ShowAll();

Build ();

…

Acá el ejemplo de GtkDragAndDrop y el de tesdnd que viene con los ejemplos de Gtk-Sharp

Aquí estan los ejemplos para descargarlos

Ahora un ejemplo recién un poco mas interesante en Mono.Cairo, que dibuja una X de colores sobre una ventana, luego esta misma imagen la pasa a un archivo de imagen PNG. Ahora la parte mas interesante:

…

Cairo.ImageSurface Imsf = new ImageSurface(Format.ARGB32, 200, 200);

//Se usa el contexto solo dentro del bloque

using (Cairo.Context Ctx = new Cairo.Context(Imsf)) {

Ctx.LineWidth = 20; //El grosor de línea

Ctx.SetSourceRGB(0,0,1); //Color Azul

Ctx.MoveTo(0,0); //Mover el lapiz o cursor

// Configura una línea desde el punto (0,0) hasta el punto

// (100,100), para luego dibujarla con stroke

Ctx.LineTo(100,100);

// Stroke sirve para dibujar lo que ya se a configurado previamente,

// según las cordenadas.

Ctx.Stroke();

Ctx.SetSourceRGB(0.66,0.44,0.33); //Color Cafe

Ctx.MoveTo(100,100);

Ctx.LineTo(0,200);

Ctx.Stroke();

Ctx.SetSourceRGB(0,1,0); //Color Verde

Ctx.MoveTo(100,100);

Ctx.LineTo(200,200);

Ctx.Stroke();

Ctx.SetSourceRGB(1,0,0); //Color Rojo

Ctx.MoveTo(100,100);

Ctx.LineTo(200,0);

Ctx.Stroke();

//De objeto Cairo.ImageSurface dibuja en un archivo PNG

Imsf.WriteToPng(“Dibujo.png”);

}

//Crear Ventana, con el titulo “Dibujo”

Gtk.Window Win1 = new Gtk.Window(“Dibujo”);

//Crea un widget tipo Gtk.Image que contiene un archivo de imagen PNG

Gtk.Image Img1 = new Image(“Dibujo.png”);

Console.WriteLine(“Se a creado un archivo Dibujo.png”);

//Crea un contenedor tipo Gtk.HBox

Gtk.HBox hbox = new HBox();

hbox.Add(Img1); //Añade un objeto Gtk.Image al contenedor

Win1.Add(hbox); //Añade el contenedor a la ventana

Win1.ShowAll(); //Muestra todo

…

Entoces:

• Un objeto del tipo Cairo.ImageSurface es en el cual se dibuja.

• Se podría decir que un objeto Cairo.Context, son las herramientas para dibujar en una surface, como por ejemplo un Cairo.ImageSurface o en un Cairo.Surface.

• El metodo Cairo.Context.Stroke() dibuja según argumentos establecidos por otros metodos como por ejemplo: MoveTo(), LineTo(), LineWidth()

Una así queda:

Descarga aqui el ejemplo.

Por favor avisenme si existe algún error ::)

Aquí la parte en la que me quiero enfocar del código:

…
// Crear una clase Cairo.ImageSurface pasándole como argumentos el formato
// (Format.ARG32), el ancho de la imagen (240) y el alto (80)
Cairo.ImageSurface surface = new Cairo.ImageSurface (Format.ARGB32, 240, 80);

// Primero se crea una clase Cairo.Context y se le añade como parámetro la
// clase creada anteriormente, después se usa el espacio de nombre Cairo.ctx
// solamente dentro de un bloque.
using (Cairo.Context ctx = new Cairo.Context (surface))
{
// Se Selecciona el Font
ctx.SelectFontFace (“serif”, FontSlant.Normal, FontWeight.Bold);
ctx.SetFontSize (32.0); // El tamaño del Font

// Selecciona el color Azul
ctx.SetSourceRGB (0, 0, 1);

// Dibujar
ctx.MoveTo (10, 50);
ctx.ShowText (“Hello, World”);

// Crea una imagen en el directorio del ejecutable o en la carpeta personal (home/usuario)
surface.WriteToPng (“test2.png”);

Console.WriteLine(“Se a creado un archivo test2.png”);
}

Build ();
…

Esta imagen crea Cairo:

Aquí el código completo: CairoEjemplo01

Mono provides you with a unique opportunity to develop cross platform .NET application on Linux. Let’s take a look what is Mono all about.

What is Mono?

If you are into Linux or Visual Studio development you may have surely heard of Mono. Mono is an open development project sponsored by Novell which aims to create an open source version of the Microsoft .Net development environment that runs on UNIX-like operating systems (Linux, BSD, UNIX, etc.). Mono enables developers working on UNIX-like platforms to develop cross platform .NET applications that run on similar operating systems. Mono defines itself as “An open source implementation of Microsoft’s .Net Framework based on the ECMA [formerly European Computer Manufacturers Association, now known as Ecma International] standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime.”

Mono provides cross platform capabilities for applications by compiling applications to an intermediate language instead of machine code. This way Mono makes it possible to copy binaries across platforms by using the intermediate language included in the .NET runtime of Mono.

Mono is made up of the following components:

Mono runtime: Mono runtime provides the just in time compiler, library loader, garbage collector, threading, and interoperability.

Base Class Library: A set of classes compatible with Microsoft .NET framework to provide a foundation to build applications upon.

Mono Class Library: A set of classes to provide additional functionality often useful in building Linux applications.

C# Compiler: The C# compiler.

Supported Languages:

Mono supports the following languages:

C#, Java, Boo, Nemerle, Visual Basic.NET, Python, JavaScript, Oberon, PHP, Object Pascal, LUA, Cobra

MonoDevelop

MonoDevelop can be considered as the Visual Studio IDE equivalent and the main development tool on Mono. It supports plenty of languages like C#, Visual Basic.NET, Java, C, C++ etc. It has features you would often expect in an advanced development IDE like Intellisense, integrated web designer, Source control, Class Management, Built-in Help, Add-ins etc. Apart from Linux it also runs on Windows and Mac OS X. However there is no windows installer available and you have to build it from the source.

Benefits of Mono

Linux application development has been traditionally done in C or C++ with languages like Python, etc. gaining popularity lately. However, Mono offers a unique benefit for developers who are already well versed with languages like C# and who have been building applications for Windows. For them, the learning curve involved in developing a Linux application after moving from Windows development is a lot less steep when compared to Linux development using C/C++. It also allows for rapid application development by letting you use its comprehensive set of class libraries. Mono automatically takes care of critical factors like memory management, reflection, threading, etc., and hence saves a lot of time and trouble writing code for the same. Moreover as Mono is cross platform running even on devices like Sony PlayStation 3 and Apple iPhone, your application developed using Mono can run nearly on any computer.

Some Mono Applications

Mono has been around for quite some time and there is quite an amount of active development going on around it. Here are a few Mono applications worth mentioning.

Bluefunk: A music player for Gnome developed using the Mono platform.

XBGM#: Xbox Game Manager.

gTVListings: A TV listings management program

Banshee: Media Player built upon Mono platform.

MediaNET: A software content manager tool.

Kurush: Personal Finance Tool

This afternoon I rebuilt the MonoDevelop 2.0 sources rpm currently available in Koji System for Fedora 11.

I got good results.

The i386 binaries rpm can be downloaded from:

http://is.gd/A2AL

md5sum and sha512sum files are signed. My OpenGPG Public Key.

Remember these packages are very unstable and not supported, try it at your own risk.

MonoDevelop 2.0 running in Fedora 10