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

[From: kate.alhola at nokia.com]

>From: maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org [maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org] On Behalf Of ext Andrew Flegg [andrew at bleb.org]
>Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 11:47 AM
>To: Soini Mox (EXT-Movial/Helsinki)
>Cc: maemo-developers at maemo.org
>Subject: Re: New apps for fremantle with Qt?
>
>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.

Let's once again get back to the roots. There is no one-to-one parity between Qt and Hildon 
widgets but same functionality can be done with both of them.
Mox sees a big problem that there are some composite widgets missing and you need 
to build them from several Qt basic widgets. I don't see it as much problem at all
because Qt does make much more compact code and things are easily doable.

We in qt4.garage.maemo.org have been concentrating more to fundamental
issues that were not easily doable with plain Qt like input method,
maemo-style integration, finger kinetic scroll or some hildon 
dependent window manager properties etc.

Because there are several persons that see missing of some ready made
composite widgets as big problem, we should also do some solution to this
even it is not complicated at all.

>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?

Maemo qt port has been done from beginning in full open source fashion 
anyone can participate open project and anyone can offer support
as free or for charge an for any open source software.

We have several persons that are Nokia employees, who are
doing work with this Qt, we just do it as open.

About this supported status, we have plan to to clarify situation in maemo summit.

>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?

We are telling more about Harmatan UI much advance before releasing
actual device. There will be also presentations
about Harmatan subject in maemo summit.

>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.

We have tried to release key information much advance. First story 
about Harmatan and Qt was told in LinuxTag 2008, that more than one 
year from this date. Maemo Qt project were also published as garabe
project around same time. We did first Fremantle releases of
Qt together with alpha SDK  .

>> 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.

We have finger optimized widgets already. We did not like to
make something different than Hildon but rather we took
Hildon style and adapted it to widgets. Then we added 
missing features listed above.  

>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?

You should rather think Qt Mobility as parallel track. Once again,
we have finger friendly basic widgets. About some composite
widgets mentioned earlier to get exactly same look and feel 
layout should be same than Hildon and that's not a problem.
You don't need Qt mobility to make Qt apps with Hildon look and feel.

>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?

If you would like to write simple calculator app, you just need
basic widgets like buttons, labels, text entries, containers etc.
We have all of them and they are using Hildon style.
You will have exactly same look and feel as you have with GTK

The discussion  about "missing" widgets has been has been about some 
composite widgets like picker button  that you can compose from dialog, 
scrollabele list and buttons.


Kate