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

[From: Alberto Garcia]

On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 08:17:01PM +0200, Attila Csipa wrote:

> This sounds to me like saying coding for Fremantle is a one-shot
> affair - you have these specially designed widgets, which are there
> only on Fremantle and who knows what their future will be

That's a very reasonable concern, and one that is shared by many
people, including me.

Nokia has already announced that they're switching from Gtk to Qt
in Harmattan (which has been a confusing move for many users and
developers), but I don't know if they plan to keep the same basic
widgets and UI style that has been designed for Fremantle or not.

If the plan is to keep more or less the same UI style I'd expect a
decent, community-supported, release of Gtk/Hildon for Harmattan.

If the plan is to redesign the UI all over again then God only knows
what's going to happen... :-)

> > * 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.

> Sigh, I said I won't comment on this, but... I'm not sure what's the
> developer's alternative.

Since I don't know Nokia's plans for Harmattan, I'm afraid I can't
help you much more.

It's not that I like the current state of confusion much either, I'm
just trying to explain how I see things now and I think that it's up
to each developer to decide what to do, but evaluating things first.

Many will think that it's OK for them to write applications in Qt,
even if they don't have the complete set of Hildon widgets available
right now, because that's the future of Maemo.

Others will prefer, at least for now, to stick to Gtk/Hildon, which
has been much more thoroughly tested in Fremantle, and is the one
officially supported and guaranteed to be consistent with the rest of
the platform.

My opinion?

Well, right now Maemo is Fremantle. Harmattan will come in the future
but we don't know when. The N900 has been released two years after the
N810 so it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the next device can
take two more years. It's quite a lot of time to wait to see what's
going to happen.

The N900 hasn't even reached the stores yet but what we've seen so
far suggests that this is going to be much more successful than any
previous Maemo device.

So I _personally_ don't think I'm going to worry _that much_ about
Harmattan right now. In the end it depends a lot on the application
developers' skills and long-term plans for their software.

And these are my 2 cents.

Berto