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MonoCalendar

I want to see a demonstration of the program

Sure! Simply visit the following URL and you will see how it works. Demonstration

What is MonoCalendar?

MonoCalendar is an application designed for easy management of calendars. The idea is to try to make a program like iCal  that works in other platforms besides the Mac.

What is the purpose of MonoCalendar?

The purpose, as I was saying, is to try to offer a program as good as Apple's iCal in other operating systems like Windows and Linux. Many people would like to see iCal ported to Windows, but Apple has still not given confirmation of whether it is going to do that or not.

MonoCalendar does not try to be a iCal substitute. If iCal existed for Windows, I would recommend using that before MonoCalendar. On the other hand, since it currently does not exist for many systems, it is an alternative to consider, and furthermore it is an alternative that is Free Software.

Why did this project arise?

This project began thanks to ^Aurin^ (Rocío Movilla Iglesias). After buying an iBook and falling in love with iCal, she told me that she wanted to have that program in Windows. As I do not use Windows, she suggested the option of beginning the project in .NET.

To whom is MonoCalendar dedicated?

Of course, MonoCalendar is dedicated to ^Aurin^ (Rocío Movilla Iglesias), because she is the one that encouraged me to do it.

What is .NET and why did you decide to use it?

.NET is a technology quite similar to Java. It allows creating programs that run on multiple platforms and which use a variety of languages without requiring excessive amounts of code. This is a reason why it saves time while programming.

I decided to use .NET for several reasons:

• I use Linux, and needed something that worked in Windows. Other options to make programs multi-platform used to require extra effort to recompile programs in Windows, a thing that I did not want to do. There were other options that didn't require recompiling the programs in Windows, but they were not sufficiently powerful. The nearest option was Java, but I personally don't care for Java.
• It turns out that a project called Mono is being developed for Linux. It is a free framework for .NET, that allowed me to make the program in Linux and soon prove it in Windows. Mono combined with Gtk-sharp was one of the best options that I have seen for carrying out this kind of project.

Why did you use Gtk-sharp?

I have little knowledge of Windows and the use of MonoCalendar in Windows with Gtk-sharp implied that I needed to make an installer, that Mono detected and to use the version of Gtk-sharp that is installed. I was able to do this, but I had to use an ugly .bat file, which when executed leaves behind an ugly black window. I believe that Mono will someday solve these problems. But right now the installers of Mono and Gtk-sharp do not do it. I have noticed that the examples that come with Gtk-sharp also use .bat files, which does not seem to me to be ideal if one is trying make a professional-looking application. Also I have seen other problems in Gtk-sharp that did not happen with System.Windows.Forms. Using System.Windows.Forms avoided those problem for me, but I have to wait for the implementation of it in Mono optimizations and to correct bugs, but MonoCalendar works in Linux! Not very well, but it works - it is a great step.

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