there's a probability that moi now working in linux OS oor in the future??

Hi Daniel, no sorry it will take quite a large amount of work to make MoI run on Linux. I don't really expect to have enough time available to make that happen anytime soon.

- Michael

I keep dual booting with Linux because I seem to always have just 1 application that keeps me tied to Windows. I had just gotten over all my Windows ties and was ready to go Linux only, and then MOI happened. I am tied to Windows yet again! I cannot leave MOI behind.

I understand that it would be a HUGE effort to switch to openGL instead of DirectX, but I still hope that V3 or V4 would bring about the change that would allow MOI to run on OSX and Linux natively. Please keep it in consideration, Michael.

Hi Phil - the switch from DirectX to OpenGL would take some work but that part is not really all that bad.

It's much more the UI and some of the application infrastructure stuff which is based on Windows libraries and will be very time consuming to reimplement in a platform neutral way.

My guess is that it would take me about 1 year's worth of work focusing on just that task alone to do a full port. It is hard to come up with that amount of time, right now I have prioritized adding in one year's worth of new features instead.

- Michael

If I remember correctly, it's the openGl part that prevent Moi to work under Wine.
Maybe just an option to render in DirectX would help.

Then again, It would be best do this when you'll have a big team of programmers working for you!
Just remember to assign this task between two puffs of cigar in your big yacht. :P

Marc

Hi Marc,

> If I remember correctly, it's the openGl part that prevent Moi to
> work under Wine.
> Maybe just an option to render in DirectX would help.

It's the reverse of that - MoI currently uses DirectX.

But just an option for rendering using OpenGL would not help with Wine - in addition to DirectX MoI also uses a lot of the mshtml.dll and COM windows subsystems which are not well emulated by Wine.

So I would not expect MoI to run under Wine even if doing a rendering port to OpenGL.

However, I would still like to do that kind of "rendering system" mini port at some point because it would help with running under a virtual machine emulator under Mac OS X, stuff like VMWare or Parallels would be able to run more smoothly with that.

But Wine is different, it won't help there.

- Michael

Ahh, Firefox, and XBL/XUL, you could write the UI in python using XulRunner. :)

And it would work on Mac/Windows/Linux.

Someday...

Hi Crusoe, actually I am interested in XUL, but the main problem with it is that it isn't really set up to make custom elements in C++ that can participate in low level ways such as paint themselves, handle their own layout, stuff like that.

Mshtml has a lot more extensible hooks in it for that type of thing.

Hopefully one day Gecko will get more extensibility in this area and then be a better fit for MoI as an application platform.

- Michael

Hi there

You know, I think you should really consider porting MoI to Linux and OS X. There's various tools out there that help you make it easy to bring it over like QT (now LGPL FYI), Mono and Python perhaps.

This is your best time to consider this seriously since you just barely started with MoI. If you even have this under consideration, than remember that the more versions and features are added, the more effort it takes to port.

Plus, remember that Linux and Mac OS, especially, are taking off in their respective user bases.

Being one of the first to bring an interesting app to Linux would give you a huge a advantage. You would earn lots more respect and pioneer commercial 3D NURBS modelling in Linux.

Perhaps you could find help from someone who could deal with the *NIX port. Perhaps you could open certain aspects of the development to the community (documentation, localization, etc.)

This are, of course, just ideas from an enthusiast.

As an Industrial Designer who uses Linux, it really saddens me having to go back and forth between Ubuntu and Linux to do my work.

I dream of the day that a Designer can choose Windows, Mac OS or Linux as his/her platform of choice.

Hi chocobanana, I wish it was as easy as you make it sound! :)

Unfortunately I expect for it to be a very time consuming project to produce such a port, it is hard to estimate it exactly but I would not be surprised at about one year's worth of work to make that happen. Quite possibly even longer.


> This is your best time to consider this seriously since you
> just barely started with MoI.

Well, this is the beginning of my 6th year of full time work into this project. :)

I can understand why you would think that it is just barely started though, I mean making things uncluttered and easier to use often makes people mistakenly think that it only takes a small amount of work to make such things happen... But perversely it actually takes a large amount more work to make such things.


> There's various tools out there that help you make it easy to
> bring it over like QT (now LGPL FYI), Mono and Python perhaps.

Well, these things only tend to make it "easy" if you kind of follow pretty boiler plate standard types of UI... With MoI I've done a lot of customized UI and don't really follow a lot of existing conventions very much, unfortunately that makes it harder to just be able to latch on to one of these existing tools.


> Plus, remember that Linux and Mac OS, especially, are
> taking off in their respective user bases.

Yeah, I definitely agree with you that it would be a great strategic thing to have this! But unfortunately the effort required is just not feasible for me to do right now.


> Perhaps you could find help from someone who could deal
> with the *NIX port.

It's pretty tough to find the right person for this, and I don't think that it would really be possible for another person to do such a large task totally in isolation from me. I mean to do a proper job of porting would mean making a lot of changes to core functions inside of MoI, so it would be a pretty disruptive type of thing, not something that could just easily "glide along" or happen totally aside from my own work on adding features to the existing code base.


So I'm sorry to disappoint you but it is not likely for this to happen anytime soon.

You may want to look into the VMWare, which I believe has software for both Linux and the Mac which will allow you to run Windows programs without having to boot your machine to a different OS. It could possibly solve your problem now.

- Michael

I can't believe in the near feature I will run windows just for MoI (sad)

Way out of my league--but here are my thoughts for what it's worth

I think it is way overdue and time all OS making people/companies made them universally workable.

That programme makers have to design separate products is quite crazy.

What a waste of human resources have been involved!

It's like you were buying an internationally made car but it would only run on fuel from a particular county!

Brian

< I can't believe in the near feature I will run windows just for MoI (sad)
There are another true gems that run only on Pc ;)

>There are another true gems that run only on Pc ;)
Indeed but for first time Apple LOOKS SOLID

Rhino
Siemens NX (that means SolidWorks will have to follow)

Vectorworks
ArchiCAD

Maya
Modo
Cinema 4D

Zbrush
Autodesk - Mudbox (well they had to due to Zbush port on OS X)
3DCoat

Autodesk - Toxik
Apple - Shake
Apple - Final Cut Studio

Adobe - ...etc.

(Solutions to fit all wallets)

Yes, but to be fair - Rhino OSX had been requested for many years, but they never planned to port it. Then someone knocked on their door with a working version in hand... I think Michael is doing right to focus on improving MoI for Windows. Once everything goes 64 bit, will there be any advantage to using OSX anyway?

Brian, if you want to compare software to gasoline then at least you should consider the OS is the type of engine. And the software can be gasoline, ethanol, diesel, hydrogen, etc. Some can be interchanged, and some not!

jonah

Hello Michael

I certainly am well aware that it is a great effort to make the port and that my words didn't make it justice.

I guess this is more like something I wanted to share since I am so frustrated in my quest to free my self of proprietary OSes in an Industrial Design workflow.

Anyway, you got a great point on what concerns the interface, toolkits won't help you here indeed... Perhaps gecko, webkit as discussed before to replace that nasty mshtml... Maybe make this a RIA app? And I personally think you're definitely going on the right path by think of a proper custom interface instead of using a generic concept!!!

Great that you understood what I meant by "barely started". This is still v1 but you'll surely agree now would be the best time to port with the fewest human/technical resources available. And you don't have a manager above you to say no.

But anyway, in the end I understand your whole point for the single fact that this is a single man effort.

Thank you for the tip in running it on a VM. I would rather try everything possible to run in Wine but if necessary I'll resort to a VM.

Btw, is the educational version of MoI upgradeable to a future commercial version?

Thanks and all the best!

> I can understand why you would think that it is just barely started though, I mean making things
> uncluttered and easier to use often makes people mistakenly think that it only takes a small amount
> of work to make such things happen... But perversely it actually takes a large amount more work to make such things.

I totally agree with this Michael. Back when I did interface/interaction design, I always said that if it looked obvious, then I had done my job well. Trouble was people looked at the final result and didn't understand why it took so long.

Keep up the good work.

Hi Jonah,

> Yes, but to be fair - Rhino OSX had been requested for
> many years, but they never planned to port it. Then
> someone knocked on their door with a working version in hand...

I think that he had a kind of prototype cooked up initially there to show what was possible, not really a complete working version.

If I understand correctly, he's been working on getting a full ported version for well over a year now and there is still quite a ways to go yet before it is actually finished!

It looks like there are going to be some pretty big problems with the finished port as well since it won't run any existing plugins or even any existing scripts since those are all done in VBScript instead of a cross-platform scripting language...

- Michael

Hi chocobanana,


> Perhaps gecko, webkit as discussed before to replace
> that nasty mshtml...

Yeah I think this is the best possibility for the future.

But unfortunately these other engines are way behind in the kind of extensibility that I really need to do a proper job. Mshtml.dll has a mechanism in it called IHTMLPainter that makes it pretty easy to make a C++ component that integrates into the browser at a very low level, participating directly in the painting of the page.

The other web platforms just do not have anything similar to this, they have instead focused energy only on things accessible to script code, stuff like the Canvas element. That's great for other types of stuff, but not really for trying to make custom controls like I need to do.

Hopefully in the future this will get better though. In the most recent version of Qt they brought in a version of WebKit that can be used in conjunction with Qt. I was hoping that this might be a good way forward but I took a look at it and the extension hooks are still too primitive, it does allow for a Qt control to be declared as an <object> tag in a page, so there is something there but the controls that way are kind of like an isolated island, I need better integration into the whole page like the mshtml.dll mechanisms provide. For example I need to be able to put down a custom painted background using C++ code, while letting the browser handle the text display in the foreground - that isn't possible with a clunky <object> method but works great in the IHTMLPainter method in mshtml.dll .


> Btw, is the educational version of MoI upgradeable to a
> future commercial version?

Yeah, I think I will set it up to allow that.


- Michael

Maybe I should think up a Metafive?

Braian