MacOS support about openlivewriter

[SachiraChin]

I'm interested in contributing this version. Been working with Core CLR recently and have experience in Obj-C and C.

[milizhang]

The current code relies heavily on WinForms.
Unless you want to use the Mono's implementation of WinForms (which seems to be X11 only), finding a substitution and decoupling the UI from WinForms would be the first thing toward cross-platform.

[SachiraChin]

I think Mono's WinForms supports OS X. I noticed that repo contains come C++ library for ribbon UI, we have to look into that as well.

I will try Mono WinForms in my fork to see how it'll go and how much work it may need.

[martinwoodward]

@SachiraChin way to go - let us know how you get on - see #46 for some folks looking at Mono for a Linux version

[glennblock]

+1 for Mac. I bought Mars to use for blogging. It doesn't hold a flame to LW

[juvander]

Yes, would definitely contribute to this!

[SachiraChin]

@martinwoodward I was able get managed projects build without errors. But OpenLiveWriter.Ribbon project does not work or can be built on Xamarin Studio. I think I won't be able to build it with Mono because of the dependency of uicc.exe. Any suggestion to solve this would help me a lot. Meanwhile, I will look for alternatives.

[SachiraChin]

@juvander I've pushed updated code to my repo. You are welcome to try. Thanks.

[juvander]

Took a quick peak, lots of stuff that need rework :(

[SachiraChin]

I will log changes I do here so you guys can track.

• Able to get application build by removing OpenLiveWriter.Ribbon.
• Had to remove Kernel32.SetDllDirectory(""); and WindowsIdentity currentUser = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent(); from startup because it's not supported.
• There's dependency for urlmon.dll which found on Windows. Trying to use native Windows lib in Mac. Following guidelines on http://www.mono-project.com/docs/advanced/pinvoke/#mac-os-x-framework-and-dylib-search-path. Currently it does not load copied dll. May be it can't pinvoke Windows dlls...

[xiexin36]

@SachiraChin mono can only call dylib on os x, and Mono does not support managed C++.

[xiexin36]

Maybe we can change the UI to gtksharp, like monoDevelop, in our project, we changed wpf to gtksharp

[SachiraChin]

That's what I thought as well, but application functions heavily depends on Windows native libraries, not the UI. Even if we port UI to gtksharp, we still need find/rewrite alternatives to native assembly calls. I will update here the native functions which application depends on, we can discuss whether these can be rewritten from C# or not.

[xiexin36]

@SachiraChin Yes, some windows native libraries, maybe we can use MonoMac or Xamarin.Mac to instand of, these dlls wrapper the OS X CoreFunction in C#.

[SachiraChin]

@xiexin36 Yes I think it’s a good idea, working on getting available native library calls. If you want to see it, all of those are inside one project OpenLiveWriter.Interop.

[imhazige]

+1
I really need it, looking for this feature for years already, now it is the good time to have it as it opensource now!

[dukecheng]

Does any updates on this issue?