Dennis, > On 22 Jan 2015, at 23:05, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org> wrote: > > I just ran into a great little project, Kivy. > > I am not making a serious proposal about a GUI framework, although Kivy is > interesting in that regard. > > What I find more appealing is the project organization and the quality of the > documentation. > > The project repository is on GitHub, of course: > <https://github.com/kivy/kivy>. > > To get some sense of it I looked into the doc/ folder there. First > impression: All open-source documentation should be this good. Go here: > <http://kivy.org/docs/>. Try out the architectural overview that is > mentioned in the introduction. The next page on the events and properties > has a juicy diagram too. > > I have no idea how or whether this is similar to VCL. I'm just admiring Kivy > with no particular context in mind.
Thanks for pointing us to this project. (Actually, thanks, too, at least from me, and very sincerely—a phrase that normally suggests its obverse—for posting your rumination on AOO in the world, which I'll be not-quite-savaging shortly. Actually, not savaging it at all. :-) ) > A few points on this Kivy…. * What it is, from GitHub: <quote> Innovative User Interfaces Made Easy. Kivy is a Python framework for the development of multi-touch enabled media rich applications. The aim is to allow for quick and easy interaction design and rapid prototyping whilst making your code reusable and deployable. Kivy is written in Python and Cython, based on OpenGL ES 2, supports various input devices and has an extensive widget library. With the same codebase, you can target Windows, OSX, Linux, Android and iOS. All our widgets are built with multitouch support. Kivy is MIT licensed, actively developed by a great community and is supported by many projects managed by the Kivy organisation. </quote> * The docs are indeed remarkably good. But so is the architecture of the project and I must assume the code itself that does things. There are several good things in Kivy that I wish we had more clearly laid out on OpenOffice. These include philosophy, architecture, and other useful abstractions. In addition to the docs page you cite, there’s also O’Reilly; see: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781783281596.do * I’m particularly taken with the philosophy page (http://kivy.org/docs/philosophy.html#philosophy), as it explains the raison d’être of the project. And it’s not just marketing churn. (A similar, persuasive claim is made with the Meteor project, in its assertion of utility over Angular JS, which remains overwhelmingly popular.) * I can’t weigh in on whether it would be a good replacement for VCL or even an alternative. The claims made by Kivy, however, suggest that its use would open opportunities. * One conceivable drawback is that Kivy also uses "Kivy Language, for creating sophisticated user interfaces[,]" though it does not seem to be required for creating naive UIs. Kivy is in Python and their conference presentations seem to be mostly at PyCons. One might wonder about the use of Python for something claiming speed as a virtue. They answer that worry in their Project FAQ. See http://kivy.org/docs/faq.html#why-do-you-use-python-isn-t-it-slow * Kivy is still new. It doesn’t seem to have a Wikipedia entry (Ye Gods!)—nor does it seem to have a separate foundation supporting activity; Google Groups and GitHub seem to do the job. There also does not seem to be any major sponsor. Actually, from these points one could draw the line suggesting a nearly perfect open source project, at least in the international, direct-democratic/meritocratic and kind of friendly sense. But nothing this side of the Eden is perfect, so I’m probably missing something. :-) * Did you contact the Kivy Project? The website is at http://kivy.org/#home . * Finally, one thing I discovered earlier was that "fun" projects that could be useful but need not be are excellent ways to include more contributors. Cheers, louis > - Dennis > > -----Original Message----- > From: Louis Suárez-Potts [mailto:lui...@gmail.com] > Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 11:54 > To: dev@openoffice.apache.org; Dennis E. Hamilton > Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Qt as a replacement for VCL > > [ ... ] > > <orcmid> > I'm just using this to stay on the thread. > </orcmid> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
