I'd love to be optimistic about all of this, and I'm trying very hard - Qt has an impressive track record for avoiding flops (things like Phonon aside.. *ahem*) - but the fact that this stuff exists in the way it does now doesn't fill me with optimism. Unless they push hard to shoot for the skies, people will always always going to put up with stuff that "works".

Even if we do leave aside the QMaemo5 stuff that will cause nightmares both in terms of moving to harmattan, and in terms of other platforms (I won't beat that drum again), that still leaves Dui* existing in a rather odd not-in-mainline-not-in-any-other-platform-than-maemo type void, without a clearly defined purpose for existing in the first place. And it doesn't just subclass QApplication, it seems to subclass just about everything.

And @vvaz: yes, it's a technical preview, for which I am very grateful. Qt 4.6 has demonstrated fairly well that developing out in the open is a wonderfully productive methodology to use. I just hope that the feedback in this thread isn't going into /dev/null, and they're actually going to address the concerns people are raising.

Do you mind joining the official Qt for Maemo developer mailing list where you have Thiago and the rest of Qt champions answering questions quite promptly?

About people "not seeing" what Maemo 6 brngs on top of Qt, the discussion is indeed more than abstract before the release of a first Harmattan SDK.

Sure . Is that qt-maemo-feedback@trolltech.com?

I asked him the same by email. But I guess qgil is on his way to Barcelona now. Anyway, I think that is the mailing list he meant.

*nod*. I'm subbed, and working on a summary of this thread now.

I'll send it by tonight, how quickly depending on workload etc.

@w00t

If you have any conclusion from discussion there it would be good to make summary here.

Where did you guys get the idea that DUI-stuff is Maemo only? Symbian people have been talking about Direct UI for at least a year (IIRC), so I've thought that Direct UI is the DUI we're talking here. Which would mean that they're pushing it to both Maemo and Symbian.

And personally I wouldn't worry about that QMaemo5 -stuff. As others have already pointed out, it's very much work in progress and Thiago (or someone else with the knowledge) already made a comment about the situation in Qt blog and I'm pretty sure they'll know what they're doing.

Who said anything about "Maemo only?" We were talking about Qt in general. The onus is on you to explain why in 2009 I would need more than one API for all of my applications. Desktop or otherwise. Or don't you believe in write once, run everywhere? Rergardless, some of us do. Hopefully w00t is going to get to the bottom of this.

Exactly. When I code I code on the desktop, or the laptop, or anywhere, and not necessarily where I have a scratchbox w/emulator available. I want to be able to do that with the generic QT API on e.g. a Debian box (taking into account only the screen size of the application), and simply rebuild for Maemo when I approach the testing phase. In this age of objects it shouldn't be necessary to sprinkle #ifdefs into the code just to accomodate a different set of boilerplate code.

The burden should be on the library versions for the different platforms to do the right thing behind the curtain, not for the QT library user to #ifdef around different APIs. That's what we had to contend with on GTK for Hildon, and IMO that severly limited the range of good applications we got in the end.

w00t? And I'm pretty sure that quote below is not the first time this "DUI is in Maemo only" appears in this thread...

I don't need to explain anything and you don't need to use more than one API (Qt API) for all your applications.

And btw. I'm pretty sure that my first post to this thread made it pretty clear what I think about the situation.
However, I'm capable to understand the fact that Nokia (& former Trolltech) devs know a thing or two more about the situation than I (probably ever) do and they may actually have a reason for doing all this