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2008-07-09
, 11:33
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Posts: 3,790 |
Thanked: 5,718 times |
Joined on Mar 2006
@ Vienna, Austria
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#12
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2008-07-09
, 11:40
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Posts: 3,105 |
Thanked: 11,088 times |
Joined on Jul 2007
@ Mountain View (CA, USA)
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#13
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I have seen in the wiki that quim is going to upload the presentation to him blog.
http://wiki.maemo.org/index.php?titl...270&oldid=4269
Soon will be finished the speculations.
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2008-07-09
, 11:57
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Posts: 2,535 |
Thanked: 6,681 times |
Joined on Mar 2008
@ UK
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#14
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That's what I found so interesting. The article says that Quim Gil made all these statements, except for the one thing about Freemantle focussing on a brand new UI.
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2008-07-09
, 11:59
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Posts: 137 |
Thanked: 138 times |
Joined on Sep 2007
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#15
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Nokia wants GNOME and KDE to get together
Internet Tablets should also work based on Qt in future – Quim Gil of Nokia in talks with WebStandard about future developments and promises a continuing opening towards the community.
With Maemo, Nokia has created a new Linux-based platform for mobile devices three years ago by now. Based upon a subset of the GNOME desktop, this is still the central pillar of the GNOME-Mobile efforts.
Thus, the acquisition of Trolltech by Nokia has caused a few uncertainties, as they are the main force behind QT – the main competitor to GTK+, the base of GNOME, and so far a main part of the Internet Tablets.
Acquisition
An acquisition that has also caused surprise among the Maemo-Team. According to Quim Gil, Product Manager for the development platform at Nokia, they haven't known anything about the Trolltech take-over any sooner than the general internet public. He admitted that straight out in the talks with WebStandard taking place at the GNOME-conference GUADEC in Istanbul.
Temptation
By now, they have come to appreciate the new perspective: "Especially the possibility of sharing applications with other Nokia platforms like Series S60 is tempting", so Gil, who was the main organiser of the 2006 GUADEC in Villanova (Spain).
Schedule
It will take more time until this happens, though – while Gil did not want to commit to a definitive schedule, but QT will hardly become a part of Maemo before 2010. It is meant to be featured in the release after the next one, called "Harmattan", according to the release plan. Also, it isn't clear yet if it will be offered additionally to GTK+, or will completely substitute it.
Too early
It is simply too early to answer that definitely, Gil eluded the questions of the GNOME developers in a Birds-of-Feather-Session. Especially for a company like Nokia it is hard to give long-term promises, as they could be pinned down to certain statements. "A year ago, not even Googles Android was in sight", Gil says about the rapidly changing environment.
Parallel
He also doesn't want to rule out a parallel operation of GT+ and QT, as the resulting additional resource consumption would be balanced by the evolving hardware in the mobile sector. What is already clear now though is that, apart from the toolkit question, all other main parts of the Maemo platform will persist, as for example the interprocess communication protocol D-Bus or the hardware abstraction layer HAL. Also, the multimedia framework GStreamer and Telepathy for VoIP and Instant Messaging will still be used in the future.
Handover
That Nokia has handed over most of the GTK+ development to Immendio should not be interpreted as a sign of a quick abandoning of the toolkit according to Gil. "We invest more money in GTK+ than ever before", the Nokia Product Manager is emphasizing the commitment. In the concrete case, the reason was that a number of leading GTK+ developers have decided to leave Nokia simultaneously. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to quickly find new developers with the needed know-how, so they handed over the development to Immendio.
Together
In general, Gil hopes for a strengthened collaboration between the GNOME and KDE community in future, a step where Nokia will take an active role. After all, they are downright predestined for that due to the GTK+ knowledge and the acquisition of Trolltech. In that sense, the combination of the development conferences GUADEC and Akademy, that is confirmed for next year, is an important step in the right direction.
Summit
The release plan of Maemo places "Fremantle" as the next development step, which is based upon GTK+ anyway. Additional details will be only be revealed by Gil at the upcoming Maemo Summit, taking place in Berlin for the first time in September. The only mentioned thing was that "Fremantle, unlike Diablo, will be a major release."
Approach
A few details can be guessed already now, though – Nokia has made clear that the revision of the user interface has taken a much more important role since the iPhone launch. This point is further strengthened by Nokias support for the library Clutter, that can be used to ease creating animated, impressive interfaces. Furthermore, Nokia experiments with the desktop search Tracker, and location based services using the N810's GPS component will probably also be extended.
Hardware
At the moment, it is not confirmed that the current hardware platform will get to know the true promise of Fremantle, as Gil doesn't want to commit to either option just yet. A few things need to be cleared before it can be clearly said, but again, more details will be revealed at the Maemo Summit.
However, the product manager emphasizes that the current hardware will not be enough forever. The more advanced the software becomes, the more demanding it gets for the hardware, especially when more programs should run quickly at the same time, a wall is hit sooner or later.
Opening
A central target for Nokia in the next months is the further opening of the Maemo development, something that Nokia has to learn slowly by interacting with the open source community. For example, there will be a weekly release of the newest version of the Maemo SDK, and the Maemo Summit itself is another important step towards more openness.
Assumptions
Gil sees no contradiction between the need for secrecy about upcoming products by companies like Nokia and the maximum openness towards the open source community. "We will manage to do that", the product manager states confidently. There only has to be a strict separation between information for consumers and developers. Regarding the objection that the software might suggest upcoming hardware developments, Gil remains calm: "To have an assumption is one thing, to have an official presentation by Nokia something else entirely."
Andreas Proschofsky from Istanbul, derStandard.at, July, 8th 2008
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2008-07-09
, 13:17
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Posts: 3,790 |
Thanked: 5,718 times |
Joined on Mar 2006
@ Vienna, Austria
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#16
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2008-07-09
, 13:19
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Posts: 1,436 |
Thanked: 3,144 times |
Joined on Jul 2005
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#17
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2008-07-09
, 22:25
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Posts: 3,105 |
Thanked: 11,088 times |
Joined on Jul 2007
@ Mountain View (CA, USA)
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#18
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Last edited by benny1967; 2008-07-09 at 11:34.