Implementing an Alternative to Adobe AIR in for Linux - linux

I use a product called ReadCube on my desktop, and the creators haven't developed a version for Linux because AIR for Linux does not include many features the same way the Mac and Windows versions do, and so the development of a Linux version would be difficult for them to do. From reading adobe's website, it looks like there won't be any updated version of AIR for linux anytime soon.
I'd like to know if it would be feasible for one person to develop an alternative to AIR for Linux that app developers could build upon. I'm not sure what this would entail as I can't see the source code for AIR so I'm not sure what technology is involved aside from the short wiki description that it allows developers to combine HTML, Javascript, Flash and other things to make applications.

Related

Flutter as GUI on Linux (non-Android)

I am thinking about creating a GUI for an embedded system using Flutter/Dart. The system will be a plain non-android system running on ARM.
The GUI will be the only piece of software visible on the screen, so there will be no need for a desktop environment.
I have done this before using QT embedded/C++, but the design requirements for the new device's GUI are such that this approach would be inefficient.
I was wondering if anyone might have succeeded in such an effort and would be willing to share.
Thanks.
The official Flutter documentation and examples for building a desktop shell is at:
https://flutter.dev/desktop
Desktop, embedded system, and web are still experimental and not yet fully supported, but building upon what others have attempted and links shared from the comments, so as mentioned:
There’s https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding, though some parts have been merged into the main Flutter SDK, others parts are still currently relevant for launching desktop apps, such as /example/linux inside flutter-desktop-embedding/example/.
Nov 2018, medium/Flutter on Raspberry Pi (mostly) from scratch, involves a Flutter engine built for ARMv7 and the embedder as https://github.com/chinmaygarde/flutter_from_scratch.
And one more, Oct 2019, medium/Flutter mobile, web and desktop, most recent and perhaps most useful since it demonstrates across three platforms (though not quite your requirements, since it runs in a desktop environment).
but I was able to get this sample running on Chrome and my Linux desktop following this, it will involve flutter-desktop-embedding/example/linux.
Otherwise, working examples are few and far between.
(there is another medium/Flutter for Desktop: Create and Run a Desktop Application, but is not recommended because it is based on an even older version, prone to various issues)
Updated 2020:
https://elinux.org/ELC_Europe_2020_Presentations, on the page, search "Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems" for the pdf slides and youtube video.
the companion source code seems to be on https://github.com/sony/flutter-embedded-linux. (very active, should be more progress in 2021)

Mac, Windows, Linux - which platform for web development?

I am using Windows at the moment and i am working on web development. However, my development approach is some kind of retro. My projects are old and i would like to switch to a responsive layout and OOP code on my PHP side. I did some research on new web design and development concepts.
Some examples are Foundtation and Bootstrap framework for responsive and clean HTML/CSS, Laravel and other PHP frameworks for my MVC needs.
However, it seems like all new concepts and frameworks are based on such servers/tools: sass, nodejs, grunt, ruby, mixture and so on... Even Google Web Fundamentals examples are just working on OS X enviroment.
All tools are compatible with Mac OS X mostly. I would like to build a fresh working enviroment.
My intention is not to start another controversy between Windows, Mac and Linux users.
Just wanted to know how to setup best enviroment for my web design and development purposes.
Thanks.
Anything that is not windows is preferred at best it is crippled and at worst it is useless
Linux is easier for those with less experience due to it being closer to what your deployed server will look like.
OS X is fine also but has a extra learning step or 2 for those who are less experienced when it comes to setup and config.
And OS X has support for all the fancy graphic design tools ( as well as excellent hardware support )

Is there a cross platform desktop framework that would utilize native libraries such at .NET and Cocoa?

I am starting a project that is heavily graphics related (think, paint app with layers).
Anyway, I have a long history in C#, Java, JavaScript and Ruby. This application will be open source.
But what I'm looking for is a "build once, use everywhere" framework. Most of the platforms I've looked into either seem to be far too outdated, too complicated, or just not a right fit.
I've looked into Swing, WindowBuilder, wxRuby, etc. So many choices and none seem modern enough, have good documentation, etc.
I was a C# desktop developer for years so if I were targeting Windows only, I would go that route easily. But I want my app to run on Macs too. But, I would like the Mac version to look like it was designed for a Mac and the Windows version designed for Windows, etc. I'm looking at the Mono Project currently. But the idea of my Mac users installing Mono doesn't appeal to me.
Anything Ruby based would be cool but not required.
Anyway, what are some recommendations? I use NetBeans, Eclipse and Visual Studio. So I'm not concerned with learning new IDE's if I had to. I even thought about doing it all in JavaScript and using the canvas but since I need to work with large, local binary files, I didn't know if that would be a good option.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Real Studio can create cross-platform desktop apps for OS X, Windows and Linux. It can also create Cocoa apps and you can use it to interface with Cocoa directly when needed.
However, Real Studio creates Win32 apps, not .NET apps so you cannot directly interface with .NET libraries.

Make a game with Cocos2dx on Linux

I'm some familiar with Cocos2d and Cocos2dx.
But only I worked in Mac, I know which is possible work with this engine (Cocos2dx) in Windows, but I don't know if is possible develop a game on Linux.
By the way:
I'm not talking about a port, I want develop a Videogame multiplataform on Linux.
Would be great know the way of how start my game on Linux.
Thanks!
While I haven't tried it, cocos-2dx is, according to their documentation, is usable on Linux although my understanding is that this means one can build android projects using cocos2d on Linux.
In terms of where to start, I've used both SFML and SDL as both are well supported on Linux. Both are cross platform although SDL supports a wider range of platforms - I have an SDL2 game in progress that runs on Linux and android for instance whereas SFML does not yet have android or iOS support. Coming from cocos2d though I think you'll find the SFML API easiest to pick up.
As a fair warning, the landscape is a bit confusing at present because both SFML and SDL have a popular stable release (1.6 for SFML and 1.2 for SDL) with one API along side a popular development release (2.0 for SFML and 1.3/2.0 for SDL) that has a similar but not identical API. This is particularly noticeable with SDL where the documentation for 1.2 is much better than the documentation for the development API. In terms of choosing one over the other, the stable releases are precisely that - stable. In both cases the development releases have been under way for some time so if you are willing to dig for documentation a bit and ask questions it's worth getting the new features.
There is book that provides a nice introduction to Linux game development that, while dated, might be a good first step if this is your first outing with games on Linux, especially if you decide to use SDL Programming Linux Games.
Update:
I saw the directions here and after (roughly) following them cocos2dx does build on my Ubuntu 12.04 x64 machine. The "Set up Environment" directions seem sound but the makefile information appears to be out of date as there is no build_linux.sh instead there is a make-all-linux-project.sh. After this finished pulling in missing deps and building I changed into the samples/HelloCpp/proj.linux directory and ran make. This created a HelloCpp binary in samples/HelloCpp/proj.linux/bin/debug. Running that popped a HelloWorld cocos2d screen. According to the output the verison is:
cocos2d-x debug info [cocos2d: cocos2d-2.1beta3-x-2.1.0]
That said, I don't see a lot of documentation for the linux port and most of the related community entries seem to be out of date so you may find more support from using one of the libraries I already mentioned.
Download cocos2d-x project there is a test sample games which compiles on all platform android, windows, iOS , Windows Phone ...See you are going to code in c++ that's it then whether you build it in linux or any other platform doesnt matter for cocos2d-x kind of engine
so i suggest start with the sample projects of cocos2d-x .... and as you want to do it in linux ...make something then compile it in linux like I do ...

Uses of VC++ these days?

Can someone give examples of some good applications / project that are made in VC++ commercial and non-commercial.
What do you use VC++ for these(2008...) days ?
Do enterprise application three tier i.e get written in VC++
Is there any use in leaning MFC these days?
Computer games are mostly still written in C++ on Windows using Visual Studio. Enterprise applications do usually use c# or java as enterprises have more money to buy hardware to make up for the difference in performance where games need to run on a significant amount of devices such as the PS3, Xbox 360, PS3, Windows, Mac etc. with limitations on memory.
Also embedded products, system utilities and software that makes extensive use of several low level API's are still written in C++. It definitely still has uses.
For low-level stuff, there is still nothing that beats C and C++. For example, I wrote Taekwindow in Visual C++ 2008. It consists mostly of Windows API calls; any other language would be too much of a hassle, and in this case not even possible (hook procedures).
The configuration tool was done in C#, but I am currently redoing that in C++ to make code reuse easier. I did look at MFC briefly, but decided that I didn't like its bloat for such a simple program, so I ended up using only the vanilla Windows API and its dialog manager. Admittedly, I can be a bit of a masochist sometimes.
Microsoft said that they'll improve MSVC because they have customers who have millions of lines of C++ already. For all I know, most well-known, commercial applications for Windows, not to mention Windows itself, are built using MSVC: i.e. applications which have been years in the making.
The most recent time I used MSVC (and MFC) was on a PocketPC/SmartPhone (i.e. Windows Mobile).
The majority of cross platform computer games are always written in VC++ since abstractions are always used anyway. Some platforms such as PS3 even allow for games to be compiled straight out of VC for PS3.
I'd say, anything cross platform that has to run on both Windows, mac and/or linux has a high chance of being written in VC because it's the best IDE out there.
Visual C++ is the ultimate programming tool which is still widely used in Most of the Core Banking and financial products developed by software companies. AS far as I know, adobe products are developed in VC++ and if you want to code anything in windows based pda or phones , vc++ embedded which is also called eVC++ is the way to go. Most of the kernel level rootkits are developed making use of VC++ with DDK functionality. The list goes on like that. There is no reason to consider vc++ as being not used these days.

Resources