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

[From: Alberto Garcia]

On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 05:09:25PM +0300, Kate Alhola wrote:

> > The importance and the goal of Hildon is to provide a set of essential
> > widgets so
> >
> > a) app developers don't have to waste their time in writing them
> >    themselves
> > b) there is UI consistency between all applications
> >
> > If there are no Qt equivalents for all Hildon widgets, none of
> > these two problems are solved, no matter how easy it is for
> > developers to write their own widgets or how compact the code is.

> If you think that if there is not 1 to 1 equivalent for everything,
> there is nothing.

No, I haven't said that.

What I say is:

 * The Fremantle UI style depends heavily on a set of widgets that
   have been specifically designed for it.

 * These include some very fundamental widgets such as HildonAppMenu,
   HildonPickerButton and HildonStackableWindow.

 * If you take a look at the N900 you'll see that these widgets are
   used ALL OVER THE PLACE.

 * Example: there's no application in the N900 using a menu other than
   HildonAppMenu.

 * If you want to use a menu in your application you must use
   HildonAppMenu or a widget designed to mimic its look and feel, else
   your application will look different.

 * There's nothing necessarily wrong with that (e.g. Canola), but
   developers should be aware before starting to write their apps.

So:

 * Do you want to provide Qt libs for developing Fremantle apps? Good

 * Are all the widgets that have been designed as a central part of the
   Fremantle UI available in Qt? Good

 * Aren't they available yet? Fair enough, but then make sure that
   developers are aware of this.

The bottom line:

 * Telling people that it's completely reasonable to write Fremantle
   apps in Qt without making clear that some fundamental Fremantle
   widgets have not been written yet it not a good idea IMHO.

> It is also other question that which is more wasting time, writing
> couple of dozen lines when you can save couple of thousand lines in
> all application by more compact and efficient code with C++ and Qt.

I'm not going to start a C vs C++ debate, but I don't think this is an
argument here since there are already C++ bindings for Hildon:

http://maemomm.garage.maemo.org/docs_unstable/tutorial/html/sec-TouchSelector.html

Berto