Which language?

Question

OK, so I get up to laying out the GUI for my new program, writing a bit of code etc.

Then I realize...

I want it to run on Linux,Mac and Windows.

The language I am best at is C# and this is the language I have used so far, however, it uses the .net framework, would it run on Mac and Linux, and how easy would it be to set up on them?

I am relatively good at Python, and I could use this for the program, but how hard would it be to get a good GUI set up using TKinter, with splash screen?

Of course, the other alternative is C++. I am OK at it, but I have never used it to create a GUI, how hard would it be to get this set up?

The end product is a HTML editor, that I want to put up on a website for download, and into a box for shops. So the language needs to be robust, and be able to have minimal set up requirements for the end user, of course, with Python, I can distribute Python 2.5 with it, but not with the .Net framework (?).

What do you think I should do?

Sophie

Answer 1

wxPython is a cross-platform toolkit. Currently supported platforms are 32-bit Microsoft Windows, most Unix or unix-like systems, and Macintosh OS X.



The feature set is robust, documentation is good, and there are tons of examples. Download the wxPython Docs and Demos. It contains a program written in the toolkit that has real program examples of all the widgets. It is probably one of the best sources of open source, cross platform programming info i have ever come across.



IMHO, you will get far better mileage out of wx than any other python toolkit. Remember, the wxPython Docs and Demos is your friend!

Answer 2

I would use Java. You can distribute the Sun Java Vm with your software I think as long as you do it according to the rules in the license agreement.

But of course I'm just saying that because Java is my favorite language.



Take a look at Mono. It's an open source .Net platform that runs on Linux and mac. Then you can use C#.

http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

Answer 3

Go with Python then. I would use GTK+ with it . Check please if you can use GTK+ on Auqa on Mac or only with X11.

About C#. There is Mono project on linux which supports Windows Forms. The problem I think is Mac. Check please if you can run Mono on Darwin. Again Aqua can be a problem.

Answer 4

Java = platform independent and if you already know C#, the move over to JAVA is pretty painless