Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
quoted text
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:38:35 +1000 Lorn Potter <lpotter@trolltech.com> babbled:
> 
>>> Well, a almost desktop compliant x11 system with a wide variety of  
>>> frameworks, libs and programming languages.
>> It will be hard to achieve a consistent look and feel across all these
>> toolkits. Not to mention inter process communication.
> 
> dbus. common look and feel - as long as there is choice and variety, this won't
> happen. wouldn't we love it if everyone drove a blue ford falcon.it's be so
> uniform. parts would be easy to find ad everyone drove the same car. spray
> painters would have such an easy time - they only need to stock blue paint! :)
> 
> in the end - we are humans. variety *IS* part of life. without it our lives
> would be dull and boring. different toolkits, different looks, different feels,
> different applications, languages, hell... different devices... are here to
> stay :)
> 
> i guess i just don't lik the idea of a thin vertical stack where at each layer
> 1 choice has been made for me and i'm stuck with it, like it or not, or i move
> to a whole different stack. eg - must use qt, or must use gtk, or must use efl.
> allow the choice to be made at the latest stage - not the earliest. i prefer
> the idea of an ecosystem where all these toolkits and mechanisms get along and
> co-habitate. jungle vs ivory tower guess... i'm a jungle kinda guy! :) anyone
> want a banana? :)

I guess you have to define your target audience. The small niche linux hacker group or the larger
general phone community that requires a consistent look and feel.
Perhaps a good read of the Human Interface Design Principles at apple might do some good.


quoted text
> 
>>> You can not port your garden variety x11 app to qtopia. Which you can  
>>> (almost) do with the other frameworks.
>> Any Qt app can be 'ported' easily. Just as with gtk, or efl, or
>> pick-your-toolkit for any library that is on the device.
>> So yes, you _can_ port your garden variety app to Qtopia. It just needs to be
>> written with one common toolkit - Qt.
> 
> sure, but any non-qt app.. will be a behemoth to port. you either:

just as any non-<toolkit-of-the-day>
Like porting a qtopia app to gpe. or a windows app to linux. are you going to include win32 or S60 
port because they have _way_ more applications written for them.

quoted text
> 
> 1. do a whole port of the app to qt/qtopia (work work work!)
>   (not to mention now that this basically means you pay nokia a license fee,
> or your app must be GPL, can't be mit-x11, bsd, APL, MPL etc.).

You want to charge people money for your commercial app? so why is it bad for Trolltech 
^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Nokia to do the same?
GPL ensures that the code and software remains free. Besides, the Neo is touted as a "Free your 
phone" phone. Why would you want to install non free apps on it? I could just as easily use any 
Nokia phone in existence.


Actually you are free to license the code you write in any way you want. It just has to be 
compatible with the license you link it to. No one is stopping you from writing your code in 
multiple licenses anyway.


quoted text
> 2. you port the toolkit (port gtk, efl, etc. etc.) to qtopia (and this also
> then follows the above license issue), which when done once at least covers all
> users of that toolkit, but which is no small feat
> 3. you write an xserver for qtopia/qws! (the server itself will be GPL or you
> have to pay nokia), but you avoid license issues... and now anything that uses
> x11 should work...
> 
> but the above all require work... a signficant amount of it.
> 


-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Systems Group, Trolltech, a Nokia company


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