[maemo-developers] Portrait Maemo app

[From: Vladislav Grinchenko]

David,

> Also, I've just written my first app in gtk/C.
> After sobbing quietly and trying to avoid getting tears on my N800 I'm looking
> forward to getting back to Qt!!
> 
> Apologies to any gtk fans out there - I just have a hard time with all the
> pointer casting and trying to bludgeon the OO api into C. Qt was so much more
> elegant.
> 

If you are looking for an OO wrapper, then I would highly recommend
official Gtk+ C++ binding - Gtkmm [1]. It's SDK is fully integrated with
maemo (thanks to the relentless work done by good people of Openismus
[2]).

You can install all necessary libraries with one simple meta-package
[3], [4].

There are several Gtkmm applications ported to and integrated with Maemo
UI you can use as an example: glom [5], granule [6] to name a few.



On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 10:51 +0100, David Greaves wrote:
> Lorn Potter wrote:
> > Qt's rotation is not done on the hardware level, it is done in Qt's
> > software. It can be done, if the transformed driver is being used.
> OK - given no tilt sensor, I'd put buttons in the corners that do the same thing.
> 

Same goes for Gtk - all you do is have 2 Views of MVC pattern [7] - one
for landscape, another for portrait. Gtk+ supports text rotation. You
would need to rotate labels of all buttons, reorient toolbars, and
rotate your text/graphics as well. But it is doable. As a good starting
point, look at FBReader source code - the venerable e-books reader does
software rotation without a hitch [8].

> check = (GtkCheckButton*) gtk_check_button_new_with_label("aargh");
> Since when does a constructor need type casting?
> 

More like this in Gtkmm:

Gtk::CheckButton cb = Gtk::manage (new Gtk::CheckButton ("foobar"));

and you don't have to worry about memory management ever again.

> So when can I
>   maemo-rootstrap diablo50_Qt_armel
> ? <grin>
> 

I don't think so [9], but I guess, after all, it is a matter of personal
taste. Take a look at Ardour [10] as a good example of separating
functionality from a GUI toolkit.

hope this helps,
--vlg

[1] http://maemomm.garage.maemo.org/docs/index.html
[2] http://www.openismus.com/
[3] http://maemo.org/development/documentation/programming_languages/
[4] http://home.comcast.net/~3rdshift/articles/Nokia770/Maemo-Gtkmm.html
[5] http://www.glom.org/
[6] http://granule.sourceforge.net/
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller
[8] http://www.fbreader.org/
[9]
http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/FAQ/html/index.html#id2504429
[10] http://ardour.org/development