Anybody know if there are plans to release a Mac version of Moray once it goes
to open source (after POVRay 4.0)

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That might be hard, Moray is mostly written in C++/MFC.

I used to have a cross platform SDK to convert MFC programs on teh windows 
to Mac, but it was expensive ($2500), and isn't supported anymore.  (pretty 
long ago).

I did have a thought about converting it to c# ... if we did that, then it 
would be pretty cross platform.

However, although Java seems to be well recieved, I'm not sure how well 
recieved c# would be in the open source world.

Thoughts?

          == John ==

"Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
news:web.476bb6e5eb71a93494e61a50@news.povray.org...
> Anybody know if there are plans to release a Mac version of Moray once it 
> goes
> to open source (after POVRay 4.0)
>
>

Post a reply to this message

John D. Gwinner wrote:
> That might be hard, Moray is mostly written in C++/MFC.
> 
> I used to have a cross platform SDK to convert MFC programs on teh windows 
> to Mac, but it was expensive ($2500), and isn't supported anymore.  (pretty 
> long ago).
> 
> I did have a thought about converting it to c# ... if we did that, then it 
> would be pretty cross platform.

I don't think the language is the issue here - it's the support and UI
libraries. POV-Ray is quite portable given our use of the boost libraries
for handling platform-specific stuff and a requirement for a modern c++
compiler, and Moray ought to be the same, albeit with the difficulty that
it has GUI.

Provided the MFC stuff is removed in favour of something else, plus any
windows-specific non-MFC-isms fixed, the port should be fine in C++. Of
course the above is a lot of work. With Moray going GPL3 we have a number
of cross-plaform UI options open to us, including QT (for example).

-- Chris

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"Chris Cason" <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote in 
message news:47f0d198$1@news.povray.org...
> John D. Gwinner wrote:

> I don't think the language is the issue here - it's the support and UI
> libraries.

Right - MFC gives you the GUI but also some utility classes (collections, 
etc).  The reference to C# though meant also .Net - that would make the GUI 
and 3D parts easier I'd think.  It would also be one executable.  Then 
again, Java would do the same thing.

> Provided the MFC stuff is removed in favour of something else, plus any
> windows-specific non-MFC-isms fixed, the port should be fine in C++.

Right .....

> Of
> course the above is a lot of work.

Right - what I had been thinking is that a lot of the MFC stuff could be 
done pretty easily in .Net and in a pretty similar manner, reducing the 
work - however, on second thought, I bet it's probably just as much work and 
added to it the language conversion.

> With Moray going GPL3 we have a number
> of cross-plaform UI options open to us, including QT (for example).

I don't like QT due to religious reasons - their license agreement said if 
it's on Linux both multithreaded and regular libraries were free, but only 
allowed use of very limited Windows libraries (single threaded) if you were 
open source on a Windows platform.  I even emailed them and asked for an 
exception, and they were pretty blunt.  What I was trying to do was use 
BoundsChecker to find a pretty bad handle leak in their code, and the Open 
Source app (a database app) was multi-threaded.  It leaked GUI handles like 
no tomorrow.

Maybe it's changed though.

Of course, the same problems exist with POV-Ray, so it would be nice to have 
a common set of GUI libs / API's.

            == John ==

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John D. Gwinner <john punctuation gwinner punc cornell punc edu> wrote:
> > With Moray going GPL3 we have a number
> > of cross-plaform UI options open to us, including QT (for example).

> I don't like QT due to religious reasons

  Some people like wxWidgets, as it can be used to create cross-platform
UIs with native look&feel. I have never tried it myself, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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