[maemo-developers] Python App on Maemo

[From: Jeremiah C. Foster]

On May 5, 2009, at 1:48 AM, Jey Han Lau wrote:

> We are currently trying to build a GUI application on Maemo, and after
> listening to suggestions from a few Maemo developers we started
> prototyping it with Python and Qt.
>
> Python and Qt seems easy since the UI code designed from Qt designer  
> can
> be converted into python automatically. But soon we came to realize  
> that
> only the UI code (in xml) is converted, any functions, methods or code
> written in C++ for the original Qt application has to be manually
> translated into Python. Seems reasonable but now we aren't so sure if
> this is the best approach anymore...
>
> The application we are building isn't too complicated (but will have
> quite some number of screens/forms), and will contain SOAP web service
> calls, and some file writing/reading. We've got the web service call
> working using ZSI, so all that is left to decide is the UI framework  
> to
> be used. Qt seems to be a better choice initially since it comes  
> with a
> designer IDE that allows us to design the GUI more easily.
>
> Before we move on to spend more time using Python and Qt to develop  
> our
> program, we'd like to hear some comments from you developers : )

If the strength of your development team is in C++, then prototype  
your application in C++. Qt is built on C++. The python bindings are  
very useful to prototype quickly if you are strong in python (Qt has  
other bindings as well, including perl bindings which are a SoC  
project.) But there is no need to prototype first in python - it gives  
you no special advantages aside from the fact that most prefer to code  
in python versus C++ and that some consider prototyping to be much  
faster in python.

Jeremiah