I have been trying for a while now to develop my applications with Cocoa and just keep running into the same issues.
Also note that I've asked this question before, so feel free to ignore this message ...
In the past, when creating an application for Windows, Linux and MacOS (Carbon), I enjoyed the luxury of designing my application on one platform (typically MacOS) and then copy the sources to a Linux or Windows VM to simply recompile it.
This always worked very well - the user interface design matched beautifully on all 3 platforms. Sure there are some small differences like the shape of a button or the tabs on a TPageControl. But in the end, things were placed the same way (position/size), fonts were the same size, etc.
With current Cocoa development this is no longer the case.
Fonts are smaller, TPageControl is not even the same width, etc. (I've posted examples and corrections in other posts)
I understand that the goal of the developer(s) involved is to match a design of XCode as close as possible. With all respect to them, since they do a lot of great work for which I'm very grateful, but is this the route Lazarus is going to follow?
On top of that: Cocoa is not (yet) mature enough for use with the IDE (designtime), so I find myself having to work with Carbon (or a different platform like Windows) to find out that all my work has to be corrected to make it look comparable in Cocoa.
I guess what I'm asking is; to accomplish the ability to develop for 3 platforms (Windows, Linux and MacOS Cocoa);
- Should I add additional compiler directives to modify width, height, margins, font size etc. so my design works on all 3 platforms?
- Or will there be an alternative working method (match LCL or match XCode)?
- Or would it be better to make Cocoa look closer to the design no matter what platform we use (of course with the exception of buttons shapes or size, tabs shape for TPageControl)?
The current direction makes it a pain to modify all my existing apps to move to Cocoa, and development of cross platform applications in the future will be a pain as well.
Just to be clear; nothing but great respect for the developers!
They are doing a great job which as usual is greatly under-appreciated.
I'd just like to know what the right way to develop a UI for my applications will be.