[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer

[From: Kalle Vahlman]

2005/11/7, Holger Freyther <freyther at gmx.net>:
> Hi Pals, Nokia,
>
> I would be intersted in leading the development of a LGPL/BSD licensed
> porting layer of the Qtopia platform for the maemo platform.
>
> Why such a layer is good:
>         -Existing applications can be utilized for Maemo by easily migrating
>          them to use osso/hildon technology

"Hildon technology" here means effectively Gtk+[1]...

[snip]
> How such a port would look like:
>         -We would use Qt2/X11 and make it look like the maemo gui
>         -We would implement libqpe,libqtopia, libqtopia1, libqtopiapim
>            using osso, hildon and Qt2
>         -In the future we should use Qt4 but that would require more porting
>           of the applications.

...which makes these sound a bit funky. If you use *anything*
GUI-related that is already implemented, you'll drag Gtk+ in. Which
will mean that you need to have both Qt and Gtk+ libraries in memory
at the same time, which I think is not too hot on the current
hardware.

If you make an implementation that doesn't use Gtk+ at all, you'll
effectively be re-implementing the GUI part, so talking about
"porting" apps to it is unfeasible given the differences in the
toolkits. Although I have to say that I have never really introduced
myself to the Qt API, I am guessing it's not that compatible even on
the concept level to Gtk+.


[1] The widgets are Gtk+, the UI uses Gtk+ everywhere and even the
input method is implemented on the Gtk+ level (which has reasons, but
is generally considered a bit wrong, X input method would've been
better wrt non-Gtk+ software, but...)

--
Kalle Vahlman, zuh at iki.fi
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