Thread: Maemo 6 loosing source compatibility with plain Qt, and Symbian^4
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dubik is offline dubik
2010-01-11 , 13:16
Posts: 14 | Thanked: 31 times | Joined on Jan 2010 @ Helsinki
#115
Originally Posted by Mark Wilcox View Post
It breaks source compatibility. I can no longer build and test my UI against standard Linux (or Windows or Mac) Qt for a faster compile-debug-edit cycle. Ideally I want to be able to build a large subset of possible applications that look native without going near anything platform-specific. If I have to use platform-specific stuff then it should be a couple of lines with a #ifdef or something I can easily encapsulate using the private implementation pattern.
You are confusing me. When you say DuiApplication do you actually mean all widgets and classes which directui provides? So you want to create QPushButton, QLabel and have interface like iPhone or android has with all animations, layouts, orientation changes and so on? hm. We have no idea how to do that.

I develop libdui on Mac, rest of people use Ubuntu, we have it running on Windows, to me it looks like it runs on many platforms. You are asking for sources compatibility between Orbit and DirectUI but at the same time you ask sources compatibility even with plain QT!

Btw, there are no widgets based of QGraphicsWidget in QT. So, shell we still discuss source compatibility with plain QT?

Originally Posted by Mark Wilcox View Post
I've ported Qt apps between platforms and added platform-specific stuff - even for the rather different strand that was Qtopia, the changes are still very minor. This Dui stuff is in a different ballpark in terms of effort as far as I can see, contrary to what Lorn Potter is suggesting further up the thread. Qt Mobility is obviously going to take some time to get really good functionality coverage as they have to write separate backends for each platform, but if UI code can't be cross-platform from day 1, what can?
In desktop world all your platform have monitor, mouse and keyboard. There is even a standard for keyboard layout. In mobile world it's total mess. Sometimes you have keyboard, sometimes don't, some have multitouch, some don't. Screen sizes and resolutions are so different. I just don't see how someone can create a UI framework which will be suited for different looking products. In Symbian you have soft keys. Thats the only platform which has softkeys (may be S40 another one actually). I doubt maemo also want to have softkeys in their applications. At least n900 happily survives without those. There are millions of such details. Can you immidiately recognize Symbian device? I bet you can. Doesn't matter what theme is installed, what collors or applications. You just notice that immediately. That will happen to common UI framework. Maemo device will look like Symbian. Whats the point of having maemo then? bash?

Originally Posted by Mark Wilcox View Post
Well, if these things really need to be initialized separately for every Maemo application then there should be a Maemo-specific implementation of QApplicationPrivate - surely that's exactly what the private implementation pattern is for?
Not really. Private implementation pattern is just to keep implementation really private and provide ABI. But ofcourse you can build hierarchy of _really_ private classes around it. One for maemo, one for desktop. I just don't see how it can work, not technically but in practice. What if we need additional parameter, like service name which we introduced into DuiApplication?

Originally Posted by Mark Wilcox View Post
It's really important that Symbian and Maemo be compatible. Symbian has a real shortage of decent free apps and Maemo has almost no decent commercial apps. If most apps are trivially portable between the two then both will get a significant benefit. If not, many commercial developers won't bother with a Maemo port initially because of the low volumes and we aren't likely to see many ports of free software to Symbian either (because as we've seen in this thread, most free software guys don't care about Symbian). I thought this was very clearly understood. Indeed just in December Peter Schneider was speaking at the same developer event as me in Sweden and said that Maemo is depending on Symbian's volumes to get the commercial app developers in the first couple of years.
I said it many times and will repeat again. It's not important what kind of frameworks device or platform has. If there are millions devices and something like ovistore which gives 70% revenue to developers there will be all kind of apps. Android and iphone proves it. Even palm proves it. Can you port open source twitter client to palm? I bet you can't even run it on device. (and you actually can run almost any open source app on n900, gtk, qt, tcl and so on). And still they have apps which are coming to store. And thats because of money not because of great WebOS.


Originally Posted by Mark Wilcox View Post
Forum Nokia is telling everyone to start working with pure Qt now? Is that going to produce the results anyone wants?
You will be able to run native qt on harmattan without any changes to sources. I said that on maemo summit in amsterdam. And we are working hard to get it as native as possible to maemo 6 ui. So if you want to hack few things, you may just recompile your QT app. Otherwise you have to port. I also heard that maemo 5 supports native qt nicely as well.
Last edited by dubik; 2010-01-11 at 16:22.
 

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