[maemo-developers] Maemo Language bindings and priorities

[From: Johannes Eickhold]

On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 16:20 +0300, Jukka-Pekka.Iivonen at nokia.com wrote:

Hi Jukka-Pekka,

> I'm collecting developer feedback regarding language binding needs on
> maemo. Hildon and other APIs need bindings in order to have native
> support in languages other than C.

See my comments inline. This topic partly interfers with the "Java
language bindings" proposal for Google SoC by Clemens Eisserer for which
I applied as mentor.

> Currently there exists unofficial bindings for  C++, for example, and
> bindings for Python. So the question is what bindings do you need for
> your development,

Bindings for hildon (GUI) and d-bus (communication with system services)
+ other Gnome related APIs would be needed for decent java support in
maemo.

> for what language,

Java.

> and why (if not obvious)?

A tight integration (i.e. UI is not distinguishable from the UI of a C
+hildon application while still as powerfull) of Java into maemo is
still missing. General support for the Java language is already in place
(as reported previously on this list).

Currently Java has different APIs for UI programming. None of them
directly fits with hildon. Among the most widely used are:

1. Swing (Java's own UI toolkit) [1]
2. SWT (based on GTK) [2]
3. AWT (Java's old own UI toolkit) [3]
4. java-gnome (bindings for GTK) [4]

IMO one of these should serve as a starting point for any "java-hildon"
binding activity.

Greets,
  Jonek.

[1]
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/index.html?javax/swing/package-summary.html
[2] http://www.eclipse.org/swt/
[3]
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/index.html?java/awt/package-summary.html
[4] http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/