Of course the android documentation is much more better, but you have to consider that Maemo comes from many different projects. Of course Nokia could write again the GTK documentation, the Glib documentation and so on, but there is a lot of community that provide support for this.
Maybe they could just provide more tutorials and examples to simplify the learning on how to use all that libraries for the phone.

Granted GTK docs exist outside the maemo platform - however hildonizing an app does not - they at least need to provide something for that. Its going to be damn hard to encourage devs to come over to the platform without a decent API doc. I am not an novice programmer but even i am finding it hard going with the amount of docs provided

It says, in respect of Mameo5, effectively: "Support for the API on the platform is being worked on by Nokia. At this point it is far from functionally complete or there is no code at all included in the current release."

I am second to the documentation problem too. And even just SDK installation, it took me more than 5 minutes to find the URL of Nokia closed binary EULA site (which on the other hand, Android and iPhone do much better job).

It is also hard to find a specific problem, such as, 'How do I put an icon for my application' or 'How do you trigger camera AF setting'?

In the end, I have to go back reverse engineering routine.

Yes, I don't see a problem with that. Qt Mobility is 4.6 material. 4.6 for Maemo is not out yet, so it's no wonder Qt Mobility is not functionally complete/missing. As long as Nokia seriously means 'we're working on it', it's OK. Realistically it's still way better than starting to learn GObject/GTK stuff and then realize it's anybody's guess what of that API/those libs will survive in Maemo 6.

Hmm... sounds like this wouldn't really encourage development if the framework isn't out yet and if developing for existing GTK stuff is a potential dead-end.

Maemo has to be future proof to some extent. Can't really expect developers to rewrite large swaths of code for every version of Maemo that comes out.

You misinterpreted me. GTK in itself is not a dead-end, it will continue to exist, if a community supported version is good enough for you. It's the APIs (some of which are GObject/GTK based) whose future is uclear (well, apart from gstreamer, perhaps).

There is a 4.6 tech preview available in extras-devel. While it is missing Qt Mobility, it is more than enough to get familiar with Qt and start development (and you have been hinted with mobility APIs so no surprises there). Qt docs *ARE* very good indeed. And let me repeat - Qt is not just an UI. It does TONS of things besides UI, and when Qt Mobility arrives it will be even more so.

Quite a few of us are much more interested in low level documentation then high level documentation. Publish driver code, publish gsm modem commands, fully document gstreamer, dbus, etc.

We'll use the high level apis if we can, and the low level ones if we need to...

First, I am impressed that this topic gained at least some attention and it's great to see so many responses and even from parties who probably can guide this platform forward with mandate.

To put complicated things straight, ever since 770 model of tablets, I've been waiting to obtain something running Linux and containing elements of communication and interaction in same package. I was a bit excited when N900 landed in my hand. Doing embedded Linux development over 10 years, I've been familiarized with various low level and high level approaches of several platforms and systems, being Linux user all the way. However, building user interfaces with GTK or QT is optional for our company purposes, before we can be sure that core of used platform can handle basic tasks to access required functionality.

Currently I am after suitable platform to develop m2m communication related application to security related user segments. How wonderful device N900 could be, if I just could figure out how to 'access', 'collect' and 'communicate' with this platform. I got SDK installed fine, it compiled my test programs nicely and offered me a solid base to move forward with my exploration inside N900. However, I could not find any information how to build GSM network awareness, short message communication and how to access camera, gps, accelerometer or bluetooth. All factors which are needed, when designing something which is not a 'game or QT scrolling demo'.

I sincerely hope that some one wakes up in Nokia, makes some reality check and returns to moving train to put these things up in order. They are base for you guys. It does not matter how many times you redesign ovi store, if there is no tools to produce software.

Some documentation, which gains my undivided attention in these other platforms are bellow. (now I have to check links which qgil provided and hope for best).

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1. GSM State, SMS handling and cell location:
http://developer.android.com/referen...e-summary.html
http://developer.android.com/referen...lLocation.html
http://dpimg.ospos.net/contents/docs...mesetMain.html

2. GPS handling, geolocation and related things:
http://developer.android.com/referen...e-summary.html
http://dpimg.ospos.net/contents/docs...mesetMain.html

3. Excellent introduction for system wide development possibilities;
http://developer.android.com/guide/t...damentals.html

Just looking at the organization and setup of those docs makes me believe learning to dev for android would be much better than trying for maemo.