[maemo-developers] New apps for fremantle with Qt?

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 08:01, <ext-mox.soini at nokia.com> wrote:
>
> However, if you want to have the exact same user experience as the
> preinstalled Maemo 5 applications have (as seen in all youtube videos and
> the SDK), then you have much easier time and faster development with the
> gtk-based hildon widgets in Maemo 5.

This doesn't give much of a transition plan for developers, or the
chance to fix things in the Qt API whilst it's in "community support"
mode.

It's unclear who, exactly, the Qt community who are doing the support
are. Is it people like David Greaves (lbt) and others at
http://qt4.garage.maemo.org/ or is it Kate and other people at Nokia?

Presumably, with Fremantle (almost) out, people at Nokia are now
working on Harmattan and the transition to "Nokia supported" for Qt.
Is this being done in the open? Is the Harmattan UI going to be
similar enough that the concepts (app menus etc.) are translatable?

If so, presumably Nokia are going to need an app menu API; and it
seems perfectly reasonable that we should be seeing it sooner rather
than later.

There's a lot of confusion in this thread, and it risks fueling FUD
about the stability and viability of Fremantle as a platform if - when
developers are starting writing Fremantle apps - they can't see where
the platform is going in 1-2 years.

> The equivalent of Hildon (i.e. mobile, finger optimized widgets) is roughly
> the QT mobility http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/QtMobility, which is
> not available yet.

So that raises some obvious questions:

  * When _is_ it going to be available?
  * Will it be available for Fremantle?
  * Will it provide a seamless experience with Hildon on Fremantle?

Most of that page is talking about high-level services APIs
(multimedia, contacts, location etc.). What if I just want to write a
simple calculator app?

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council chair