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55

answers:

1

I'm looking for good suggestions on where to start with an educational application I am designing.

I want my application to be compatible with Windows and OSX - my research seems to suggest that about 40% of the audience would be using a mac.

I'm keen to stick to .net/c sharp and the Mono framework.

The application is reasonably simple - it would be graphical, containing a tool bar with a menu and a few buttons. The main area on screen will contain custom graphics - I would draw onto an area in the main window using some algorithms I'm developing.

I would also need to play music, preferably mp3.

The drawing area would be animated, but not heavy duty - i.e. fairly simple line drawings, not 3d or shaded, etc.

I'm thinking about creating a GTK sharp 2.0 application in Monodevelop, using a DrawingArea for my custom drawing.

I'm not overly concerned with making the application look "Native", this would be a bonus but not essential.

I can elaborate on details if needs be, but does this sound like a reasonable starting block?

Any recommendations on a decent cross platform drawing library I could use?

+1  A: 

You may want to look at Mono Cairo: http://www.mono-project.com/Mono.Cairo

Pierre 303
They are also now closed source. [Pinta](http://pinta-project.com/) may be more suitable, as it is based on Mono.
Oded
I just noticed when I wanted to link to it. Looks like a future commercial project...
Pierre 303
I remove it from my answer
Pierre 303
Why not put pinta as an answer ?
Pierre 303
Note that GTK itself uses Cairo for drawing.
mhutch
I've spent some time doing some research into Cairo and found that it works beautifully. Also, it's easy to use which is a bonus. Thanks for the prompt responses.
Mattl
Also, while GTK itself does use Cairo, GTK projects in mono do not have Cairo drawing capabilities out of the box. I had to hunt around on my system for the Cairo assembly to add as a reference to my project.
Mattl