[maemo-developers] Does Maemo's Qt look like Hildon?

[From: David Greaves]

Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 12:25 +0300, Antonio Aloisio wrote:
> 
>>         While we are on the subject of Qt looking like Maemo without
>>         API
>>         changes, how are you dealing with the need for Maemo-specific
>>         API such
>>         as that in HildonWindow:
>>         http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hildon/HildonWindow.html
>>
>> This trick is possible because Maemo applications have menus, toolbars
>> as any normal
>> desktop application. Okay they look different, but we can instruct Qt
>> to give them the looks that
>> we want...
>> The same thing happens for the other official supported Qt platforms
>> (mac, s60 ans so on)
> 
> Yes, I know that's the Qt philosphy, but repeating it doesn't answer my
> question. For instance:
> 
> I guess, Qt windows can't usually have markup in their titles, so you'd
> be changing the documented behaviour (therefore subtly changing the API)
> if you parsed the regular title as markup, instead of offering separate
> API:
> http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hildon/HildonWindow.html#hildon-window-set-markup
> (I think that the new API should be added to upstream GTK+ instead
> anyway.)
> 
> I guess, Qt windows don't usually have a concept of "activated by the
> window manager":
> http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hildon/HildonWindow.html#hildon-window-get-is-topmost
> (This is presumably something different than gtk_window_is_active():
> http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/unstable/GtkWindow.html#gtk-window-is-active )
> 
> Also, I doubt that the Qt menu and toolbar API easily supports the idea
> of one-single "edit" toolbar, introduced in Maemo 5:
> http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hildon/HildonWindow.html#hildon-window-set-edit-toolbar

It seems to me that there are several areas where Hildon is extending Gtk + Qt
* new hildon-specific widgets (pannable, HildonWindow...
  http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hildon/hildonobjects.html )
* integrating/extending existing widgets (text entry + virtual keyboard)
* visual style (thin scrollbars,radiobuttons...)
* system interaction (essentially dbus and WM comms via API calls like
can_hibernate, is_topmost)

Is the aim to map to these in Hildon Qt?

In which case it would be good to identify and prioritise targets and
achievements and it would also be nice to have reference information for IPC for
things like system interaction.

I also wonder about better handling for applications not written for Maemo;
should the core widgets be extended to handle Maemo at the system interaction
level and provide derived widgets to expose the API.

David

-- 
"Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."