Hi Frank,
since we are here in the international part of the forum, I will answer in english, so also our english speaking collegues can understand what I'm answering.
First of all: when VO cames out, the choices were rather limited: VO had its own GUI classes, its own database (DBF), and the MDI approach was widely accepted. So there were not many choices.
Today, the world has changed a lot.
First of all, X# has no own GUI library because it already supports at least 3 of them: VO GUI classes compatible, Windows Forms and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation).
Second: the DBF database is not more good option for new applications (the same is true for Paradox, Access MDB or other file based databases). You will find mostly SQL databases from different vendors (MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, ...) that are not very compatible, and there are several cloud and non-SQL databases (the next generation of our business app will not have a local database anymore, but work against a database in our datacenter).
Third: MDI is no more widely accepted, and modern looking apps are using several different approaches. So how should your application work? MDI, one-pager like web applications, tabcontrol based?
To add complexity, we have no more one IDE, both two of them: XIDE and Visual Studio. What is your choice (mine is XIDE)?
To finish, I will show you 2 screenshots of different X# applications (I do not show VOGUI applications because they look exactly like VO applications).
This is a typical Windows Forms application. I have opted for a navigation bar on the left side, and the main windows as pages in a full size tab control. Edit windows are modal dialogs:
- WindowsForms.png (74.57 KiB) Viewed 1917 times
And this is a WPF application, entirely code based (windows are defined in code, not in a grafical painter). The main choices are the similar: navigation on the left side, all windows including the edit windows are pages of the main tab control:
- WPF-Grid.png (164.78 KiB) Viewed 1917 times
- WPF-Detail.png (51.72 KiB) Viewed 1917 times
Maybe I can build a sample application based on one of these two applications (both are in production for several years now).
Wolfgang