Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 18 September 2007 20:47, Ted Lemon wrote: Also, announcements aside, I don't see a link to the source code on the Qtopia/Neo page, so not all promises have yet been kept. Just because you haven't found the links to the source code doesn't mean that Trolltech haven't kept their promises. I've updated the Wiki linking to the preview and snapshots, it was an oversight on my part when setting up that page. I also do regular builds of the snapshots if you are interested : http://buildhost.automated.it/OM2007.2/ My images have minor fixes like the addition of timezone files and the copying of gsmhandset.state to asound.state so calls work at boot. I've also made the background image for the default skin slightly orange to help identify my builds. Andy ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Lorn Potter wrote: Not by the operating system, or the LGPL, but by the culture surrounding it. How many commercial closed source applications are available for Linux? Hi Lorn, Couldn't let that go, they are increasing rapidly - here are just a few that are used in the University where I work. Although there are open source products in these areas, these commercial ones are big time: Mathematica, Matlab, SAS statistical software, Ansys (Engineering design). regards, clare ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
I also prefer GTK+ and have invested some time developing an application on my Neo with it. I find it very easy to develop and test on my GNOME based desktop (Ubuntu) and re-compile for the Neo. I hope OpenMoko continues down the same route. John (putting a vote in for GTK+) Joshua Layne wrote: Michael Schmidt wrote: Hi, great news, but what does this mean? We need a posting of the projekt management, will Neo s Menue switch to QT? This means a GTK application will not work? Or: Any QT-Applicaiton will work now automatically? We need this info, for a decision, to stick to the library either a GTK-Gui or the existing QT-Gui. To not saddle on the wrong horse.. please send a notice Applications for Neo, should have a GTK or QT gui? Applications for the _Neo_ can have whatever gui the developer wants to build (or as many - there are several apps that support multiple rendering environments) Applications for _*openmoko*_ should have a GTK+-2 gui. openmoko isn't switching to QT. there is just now another gui available. for myself - I much prefer GTK interfaces. and will be sticking with GTK on the Neo (when I buy) Rgds, j. thanks On 9/18/07, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 and http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5429713730.html In short: Qtopia is going to be fully GPL'd (telephony applications included, which weren't) and is being ported to Neo1973. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
I think there is a place for both Openmoko and Qtopia. Useful features and possibly even entire applications can be cloned/ported back and forth between the platforms. Artwork, sounds, etc can easily be shared. There is even place for more options to discuss. E.g. Objective-C + GNUstep + X11. A very similar technology (called iPhone...) has created a lot of hype recently because it is said to provide the best UI experience in mobile phones. Can we please end this back and forth C vs. C++, Qt vs. Gtk, X11 vs no-X11, Openmoko vs Qtopia. I think most of us have seen plenty of these debates over the years and nothing constructive ever comes of them. But I agree that these dicsussion are not constructive - since there is no need for a community consensus. Everybody must decide him/ herself which platform best fits the needs. The community can only provide pros and cons. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Can we please end this back and forth C vs. C++, Qt vs. Gtk, X11 vs no-X11, Openmoko vs Qtopia. I think most of us have seen plenty of these debates over the years and nothing constructive ever comes of them. As far as I'm concerned, this should have ended last week. The original question asked was why continue with OpenMoko development when Qtopia is available, faster, more complete and stable?. It was debated and some pretty conclusive reasons came out (as posted last Thursday) 1) Redundency is good, if Qtopia fails for some reason, there's an alternative. 2) A greater number existing applications can be ported easily to an X based framework. There is also precedent in the Maemo project of where this has been very useful. I'd like to add a 3rd: Competition breeds innovation. :-) I guess a 4th reason that's come out now is some people just prefer the GTK+ api and maybe a 5th reason some people prefer the LGPL over the GPL. So there you go, there's the 5 reasons why OpenMoko development will continue.Agree or disagree those are the reasons. Perhaps these could be added to the wiki to avoid future debates running over the same ground? Cheers, Tom PS: The faster, more complete and stable bit refers to the _current_ state of OpenMoko and not to what OpenMoko will obviously become. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 8:57, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as I'm concerned, this should have ended last week. The original question asked was why continue with OpenMoko development when Qtopia is available, faster, more complete and stable?. It was debated and some pretty conclusive reasons came out (as posted last Thursday) 1) Redundency is good, if Qtopia fails for some reason, there's an alternative. 2) A greater number existing applications can be ported easily to an X based framework. There is also precedent in the Maemo project of where this has been very useful. I'd like to add a 3rd: Competition breeds innovation. :-) I guess a 4th reason that's come out now is some people just prefer the GTK+ api and maybe a 5th reason some people prefer the LGPL over the GPL. So there you go, there's the 5 reasons why OpenMoko development will continue.Agree or disagree those are the reasons. Perhaps these could be added to the wiki to avoid future debates running over the same ground? Cheers, Tom PS: The faster, more complete and stable bit refers to the _current_ state of OpenMoko and not to what OpenMoko will obviously become. I guess my only comment is that while I don't really care which interface people use on their phones, it seems like the data interfaces should be the same... If I open up qtopia phone edition and look at my contacts or maybe even edit them and then close it down and open up my OM interface and look at them, they should be the same. All edit are visible.. No double entry. In general, I think that all of that should be possible regardless of which interface you use to view/interact with the phone. Gives a little more isolation of the interface from the implementation of where everything is, and it gives people the option to switch at any time without fear that they need to copy / backup-restore their data when switching. Especially with the relevation about being able to run them both at the same time. (Qt has x11 libraries/bindings right?) So you could write qt apps which interact with GTK+ apps through the common data infrastructure. --Tim ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Tim Newsom wrote: I guess my only comment is that while I don't really care which interface people use on their phones, it seems like the data interfaces should be the same... If I open up qtopia phone edition and look at my contacts or maybe even edit them and then close it down and open up my OM interface and look at them, they should be the same. All edit are visible.. No double entry. In general, I think that all of that should be possible regardless of which interface you use to view/interact with the phone. Gives a little more isolation of the interface from the implementation of where everything is, and it gives people the option to switch at any time without fear that they need to copy / backup-restore their data when switching. Especially with the relevation about being able to run them both at the same time. (Qt has x11 libraries/bindings right?) So you could write qt apps which interact with GTK+ apps through the common data infrastructure. --Tim I 100% agree and that is just about the only constructive thing I've heard said on this (somewhat) pointless thread. I don't know the answer to what he is asking, so if someone does, please speak. At least then we might actually make some type of progress and meaningful discussion. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Jonathon Suggs wrote: Tim Newsom wrote: the data interfaces should be the same... If I open up qtopia phone edition and look at my contacts or maybe even edit them and then close it down and open up my OM interface and look at them, they should be the same. All edit are visible.. No double entry. I don't know the answer to what he is asking, so if someone does, please speak. It was asked maybe a month about having some sort of 'standard' for data storage, although I'm not sure that any of us knew about the Qtopia port at that time. I think it would be good to revisit that thread and discuss data storage, because I agree as well -- a standard way of storing data so it's 100% accessible and identical on multiple platforms will make it so much more enticing. Like someone else said about OSS in general, there are so many choices, no one way is the right (only) way, but some will prefer one method over another. As an example, I use my /home/ partition in multiple versions of Linux on my workstation, so having a /.thunderbird/ folder be 100% accessible no matter which OS I'm booted into is vital -- I need to have the same Email access in every OS I boot into while I work. Someone else had mentioned sync'ing the Neo data with some online service so the data would be available everywhere, which isn't a bad idea either, but synchronization issues come into play when you have a locally-cached copy on the phone, detecting deltas, etc. Just my $0.02. -id ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Hi Sharing contacts, dates, etc is complicated enough that you should push for openmoko and qtopia to support a standards-based sync with an external server. Then it becomes a more generic problem of interoperability instead of an obscure feature request. Brad ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
thomas.cooksey at bt.com wrote: Fantastic news! What works? Looking at the youtube videos, it appears that the phone, SMS, bluetooth power management are all working? Can you actually place and recieve calls? I'm sure OpenMoko development will continue, but a good question is why? I don't really want to start a flame war, but I do think the question should raised. Why spend so much effort creating yet another GTK+ based framework? What would happen if all the people working on OpenMoko focused their efforts on improving Qtopia on the neo instead? Surely we'd get a fast, stable and functional phone stack a lot quicker? Cheers, Tom You are absolutely right, that question needs to be answered or I'm starting to se the Linux on the desktop epic fail all over again. I posted some design suggestions a couple of days ago, I was told to check the new openmoko version and I was going to but now I've discovered this issue about qtopia I'm gonna have to wait to see what platform gets more traction. Just like the QT/GTK problem on the desktop we are heading into a long term fragmentation that won't go away: - I've worked with QT and it's clearly superior and I'm willing to bet it's energetically more efficient since it doesn't have the X overhead (can anybody measure? this is very important). - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage and I'm sure the openmoko leadership doesn't want to discourage people from starting commercial ventures on openmoko, and neither should we, because it's interesting that we have that kind of choice. So, we really need a word from the openmoko leadership, please, step in and tell us that you will focus on providing the same kind of platform that qtopia provides, so we can bet on the more free (but currently technically inferior) openmoko option, otherwise there's not reason for us to use openmoko and then we'll have a platform locked-in by qt (for commercial usage) or a fragmented scenario. And this is very damaging, it means half of the developers are no working in openmoko programs. And no, choice is good doesn't apply to everything, that's why we have standards so stop repeating that dangerous fallacy. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 08:18:31 +0200 Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. QT is bound to C++. With GTK you can choose to program in C, or, if you really want to, in C++. With QT there is no way you can write your code in C. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. With X, there are dozens of ways to paste an interactive window to the screen. They may be esthetically discordant with the main theme of the phone, but your code can communicate to the phone user and the phone hardware. I do not know how easy it is for one's application to talk to the windowing system underlying qtopia, but I have reasons to believe that a) I should have to learn to code in a totally different environment, and b) that environment would require coding in C++. Both things are not desirable for me. I see OpenMoko as a developer-oriented phone/system. Even if current performance may be not that awe-generating, processor speeds are going to increase, and optimizations will certainly be made. What I see as the most important thing in this project is that I would have a telephone that is equivalent, under as many points of view as possible, to my main computer and laptop. For this, X is indispensable, and the fact that the telephone and PIM applications are coded in the same language of the underlying operating system is an added value to the level of hackability of the OM platform. (I also do like much more the graphical look of the OM proposed interface, but this is purely a matter of tastes) Carlo -- * Se la Strada e la sua Virtu' non fossero state messe da parte, * K * Carlo E. Prelz - [EMAIL PROTECTED] che bisogno ci sarebbe * di parlare tanto di amore e di rettitudine? (Chuang-Tzu) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 08:18:31 +0200 Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. It's not a reason at all. Neo is a free phone! If I wanted commercial applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'? QT is bound to C++. With GTK you can choose to program in C, or, if you really want to, in C++. With QT there is no way you can write your code in C. There is no way right now because no one has written a wrapper. It's not impossible. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. not really. qt-rantIn fact, coding with Qt is much faster than gtk. Ask people that have done both./qt-rant With X, there are dozens of ways to paste an interactive window to the screen. They may be esthetically discordant with the main theme of the phone, but your code can communicate to the phone user and the phone hardware. I do not know how easy it is for one's application to talk to the windowing system underlying qtopia, Easier, IMHO, than with gtk/xlibs. X11 development is rather arcane. but I have reasons to believe that a) I should have to learn to code in a totally different environment, and b) that environment would require coding in C++. Both things are not desirable for me. fair enough reasons here. I see OpenMoko as a developer-oriented phone/system. Even if current performance may be not that awe-generating, processor speeds are going to increase, and optimizations will certainly be made. They haven't progressed that much in the last 6 years. Slower cpu uses less power. -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Sep 24, 2007, at 11:58 PM, Carlo E. Prelz wrote: QT is bound to C++. With GTK you can choose to program in C, or, if you really want to, in C++. With QT there is no way you can write your code in C. This is an utterly pathetic excuse not to try something. You don't have to become a C++ expert to try Qt. Just take some existing Qt sample code, read it over, spend a half day reading a C++ book to figure out the stuff that doesn't make sense to you, and then code something up and see how it works. If it really sucks, you'll know. Without doing this, you simply aren't qualified to say anything about Qt. So it's kind of mind-boggling that you were able to come up with so much prose to document your complete lack of knowledge on the topic. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. Case in point. This simply isn't true. You're saying things that you don't know to be true. Why would you do that? I see OpenMoko as a developer-oriented phone/system. I haven't even been able to get a build working. It only builds on one platform - the build is so brittle that if you don't have that platform, you can't get it to go. It's early days, so I don't count that against the development team, but this is another stunningly ignorant statement. Have you actually tried to develop an app for Openmoko yet? I've spent far more time trying to figure out the OpenMoko build system than I ever spent learning C++ so that I could write Qt code - I had my own Qt app, mostly written in C running under Qt in a matter of about a day and a half. GTK may be better than Qt for some reason, but it's not because Qt is hard to use. (I also do like much more the graphical look of the OM proposed interface, but this is purely a matter of tastes) Taste matters. The OpenMoko UI in some places really does look better than the Qtopia UI. There's no need to be bashful about preferring one design to the other because of the way it looks. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 08:18:31 +0200 Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. It's not a reason at all. Neo is a free phone! If I wanted commercial applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'? Tell that to all the people using Wine under Linux. QT is bound to C++. With GTK you can choose to program in C, or, if you really want to, in C++. With QT there is no way you can write your code in C. There is no way right now because no one has written a wrapper. It's not impossible. I thing gp is right, c might be better than c++ for small devices and certainly you need to code in c++ to take advantage of qtopia components. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. not really. qt-rantIn fact, coding with Qt is much faster than gtk. Ask people that have done both./qt-rant agree, anybody that has tried both knows it's like night and day, qt is miles ahead in ease of development. With X, there are dozens of ways to paste an interactive window to the screen. They may be esthetically discordant with the main theme of the phone, but your code can communicate to the phone user and the phone hardware. I do not know how easy it is for one's application to talk to the windowing system underlying qtopia, Easier, IMHO, than with gtk/xlibs. X11 development is rather arcane. but I have reasons to believe that a) I should have to learn to code in a totally different environment, and b) that environment would require coding in C++. Both things are not desirable for me. fair enough reasons here. I see OpenMoko as a developer-oriented phone/system. Even if current performance may be not that awe-generating, processor speeds are going to increase, and optimizations will certainly be made. They haven't progressed that much in the last 6 years. Slower cpu uses less power. strongly agree with all these points. With mobile devices, direct access to the hardware is everything because it might mean an extra hour of battery. the main problem right now is I'm not sure about the future of openmoko if they keep using X. When I learnt openmoko was using an X server it surprised me a lot, its a very weird decision. Most of Linux powered extramobile devices that I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) have some kind of framebuffer environment in which you can directly draw stuff on screen with little overhead. Dani -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 09:51:42 Lorn Potter wrote: but I have reasons to believe that a) I should have to learn to code in a totally different environment, and b) that environment would require coding in C++. Both things are not desirable for me. fair enough reasons here. Which leads to the question whether you can use PyQT or maybe Jambi with Qtopia? signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:32:46 +0200, Dani Anon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: strongly agree with all these points. With mobile devices, direct access to the hardware is everything because it might mean an extra hour of battery. the main problem right now is I'm not sure about the future of openmoko if they keep using X. When I learnt openmoko was using an X server it surprised me a lot, its a very weird decision. Most of Linux powered extramobile devices that I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) have some kind of framebuffer environment in which you can directly draw stuff on screen with little overhead. Just for the record, Nokia N770/N800 uses X. -- Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Just for the record, those are tablets, that weight more (i.e: they have more battery life thus power) that can take such overhead. N800 doesn't even have phone functions! Do you know about any linuxphone with X? Consider that QT had a X port already, why waste time removing the X dependence for QTopia if the overhead wasn't important? ;) Dani On 9/25/07, Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:32:46 +0200, Dani Anon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: strongly agree with all these points. With mobile devices, direct access to the hardware is everything because it might mean an extra hour of battery. the main problem right now is I'm not sure about the future of openmoko if they keep using X. When I learnt openmoko was using an X server it surprised me a lot, its a very weird decision. Most of Linux powered extramobile devices that I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) have some kind of framebuffer environment in which you can directly draw stuff on screen with little overhead. Just for the record, Nokia N770/N800 uses X. -- Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 10:32:46 Dani Anon wrote: I thing gp is right, c might be better than c++ for small devices and certainly you need to code in c++ to take advantage of qtopia components. If we lived through Java on mobile devices (which actually is quite virile even today), and that's one language hasn't built it's reputation on speed, then I can't accept c++ as a language being stereotypically labeled 'slow' and 'bloated'. Yes, you can write inefficient code in c++ if you don't know what you're doing, but so can you in almost any other language. I really hated C, the pointer errors I had to correct (often in other peoples code) drove me mad, but again, one could argue if done properly, pointers and mallocs are no headache - well they were for me, I try to avoid even looking at such code if possible. not really. qt-rantIn fact, coding with Qt is much faster than gtk. Ask people that have done both./qt-rant agree, anybody that has tried both knows it's like night and day, qt is miles ahead in ease of development. Agree2, did code with both Qt and GTK+ and I did find my way around in Qt much easier, but that certainly is a personal preference/experience. But please note that just because you already know a language, toolkit or framework it doesn't mean that the other alternatives are universally bad. It is simply outrageous that people here judge whole frameworks by their screenshots or preconceptions on a language they have not really spent much time working with. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Just for the record, those are tablets, that weight more (i.e: they have more battery life thus power) that can take such overhead. N800 Why do you assume that X is overhead that needs more weight and battery capacity? X11 is also using the same framebuffer as others are using. It is just a different software architecture. doesn't even have phone functions! Do you know about any linuxphone with X? The phone functionality (GSM) of the Neo comes from a separate module. So, adding one to the N800 wouldn't change anything in the performance of the graphics. BTW just for the record, the first Linux wristwatch from IBM did also use X11... here: http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/ linuxwatch.html IMHO it is a common misconception that X11 raises performance problems. It is mostly how X11 is used. E.g. if you flush too often, performance goes down because it cannot combine and buffer screen updates any more. BTW: some of my experiments indicate that the framebuffer itself is the slowest part in the game. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:18:39 +0200, Dani Anon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Most of Linux powered extramobile devices that I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) have some kind of framebuffer environment in which you can directly draw stuff on screen with little overhead. Just for the record, Nokia N770/N800 uses X. Just for the record, those are tablets, that weight more (i.e: they have more battery life thus power) that can take such overhead. N800 doesn't even have phone functions! Do you know about any linuxphone with X? Nokia N800 has a 1300 mAh battery, which is AFAIK less than Neo is going to have. -- Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 11:18:39 Dani Anon wrote: Just for the record, those are tablets, that weight more (i.e: they have more battery life thus power) that can take such overhead. N800 doesn't even have phone functions! Do you know about any linuxphone with X? According to Wikipedia, N770 has an ARM926TEJ @250MHz which should be about in the same ballpark as GTA02, so no, that's not faster. And in fact, they have to drive MORE pixels on their screen. The [EMAIL PROTECTED] in N800 is faster, I'll grant you that. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:32:46 +0200, Dani Anon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 08:18:31 +0200 Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. It's not a reason at all. Neo is a free phone! If I wanted commercial applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'? Tell that to all the people using Wine under Linux. I Don't think there are so much... I fully agree with him to say Neo/OpenMoko goal is to become a *FREE* user friendly phone. Even if Qtopia could give bigger range, or bigger celebrity, it will not change the OpenMoko/OpenEmbedded mission, to provide a free framework/os They haven't progressed that much in the last 6 years. Slower cpu uses less power. strongly agree with all these points. With mobile devices, direct access to the hardware is everything because it might mean an extra hour of battery. the main problem right now is I'm not sure about the future of openmoko if they keep using X. When I learnt openmoko was using an X server it surprised me a lot, its a very weird decision. Most of Linux powered extramobile devices that I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) have some kind of framebuffer environment in which you can directly draw stuff on screen with little overhead. Dani Ok, I am not a developper, but, I think the accelorometer has the goal to provide a good video rendering. If you see forward, the hardware will be improved, and I think there will be some eyeglasses effect or any eye candy things that won't not be possible with frame buffer... -- Steven Le Roux [EMAIL PROTECTED] xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 14:23:24 Steven Le Roux wrote: Ok, I am not a developper, but, I think the accelorometer has the goal to provide a good video rendering. Nitpick: An accelerometer measures physical acceleration and enables things like the Wiimote. What you're thinking of is a (graphics) *accelerator*. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 01:23:37 -0700 Quoting Ted Lemon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): This is an utterly pathetic excuse not to try something. It would have been, had I never attempted to get familiar with that language. But I have, a handful of times. And I concluded, many years ago, that it is not a language for me. I rest my case: if you want you can use c++ with GTK. But you cannot use c with QT. As far as I can perceive, making a c wrapper of a c++ library (and I do not mean c-looking code that compiles under c++ - I mean a library that makes heavy use of those ungodly quirks that c++ is burdened with) is a task that no sane individual might desire to embark into... But if/when such a wrapper becomes available, I will make sure to carve out half a day to gain some experience with it. So it's kind of mind-boggling that you were able to come up with so much prose to document your complete lack of knowledge on the topic. You are welcome to maintain your boggliness if it pleases you. I have not stated an absolute judgment of value from the programmer's point of view, of which I am not capable, since I have never programmed in QT (and I have never programmed in QT because it requires c++ - otherwise I would have given it a try by now, free or not free). I still prefer the look of Gnome to that of KDE, but this is purely an aesthetical judgment. I expect that with some effort I would be able to use Gnome themes on KDE. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. Case in point. This simply isn't true. You're saying things that you don't know to be true. Why would you do that? Hrmpf. How many X applications can you find in sourceforge? This translates to how many programmers who already can make use of one of the many tools that are available to generate an X-compatible executable? And on the other hand, how many people are there who can easily translate their ideas into a user interface that runs under Qtopia's windowing system? I do mean this when I say that X is easier than Qtopia. I have never programmed in Qtopia's environment, so I cannot state how easy or complex it may be. I see OpenMoko as a developer-oriented phone/system. I haven't even been able to get a build working. It only builds on one platform - the build is so brittle that if you don't have that platform, you can't get it to go. It's early days, so I don't count that against the development team, but this is another stunningly ignorant statement. Have you actually tried to develop an app for Openmoko yet? No, since I do not have an openmoko. I might have bought one had they not canceled the plan for a rebate for the second model. But I have had a look at the code. And I understand that the X running on OM will be basically the same X that currently runs on this laptop of mine from which I am writing this message (minus opengl, possibly. It will in any way be sensibly faster than the first X I worked with, back in '93, on that old Tseng Labs video card...). Once I correctly set up the cross-compiling chain of tools, I do believe that the very well-known window manager that is used by OM will not refuse to manage the windows of my humble executables, too. Carlo PS In your mail, you wrote 1) that I use pathetic excuses, 2) that I have complete lack of knowledge on topics that I write my prose about, 3) that I say things that I don't know to be true, 4) that I make multiple stunningly ignorant statements. Can you please keep these personal observations out of the conversation? Just for the sake of peace and harmony... -- * Se la Strada e la sua Virtu' non fossero state messe da parte, * K * Carlo E. Prelz - [EMAIL PROTECTED] che bisogno ci sarebbe * di parlare tanto di amore e di rettitudine? (Chuang-Tzu) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, September 25, 2007 3:14 pm, Dani Anon wrote: It's either one of the following: 1) Application asks to draw a line and waits. X sees that request and uses a driver to draw the line, then sends confirmation. Now the application waits and when the confirmation is received it's ready for the next operation. 2) Application uses a driver to print the line. I think you are misrepresenting the difference. I would write that as: 1. Application asks X to draw a line, then gets on with other stuff, or makes other calls while it waits. X calls the device driver which talks to the hardware GPU (using around 20 bytes of API call) which uses accelerated hardware to draw the line in the screen buffer. A few microseconds later X informs the application that the line has been drawn. 2. Application (via compiled in or dynamically linked libraries) talks directly to the memory mapped frame buffer. It does it's own geometry, area fill and transparency calculations, (wasting the perfectly good GPU that the hardware has) then directly updates several thousand memory locations to make the line appear on the screen. (flushing the CPU's cache in the process) While it is doing that it cannot do any other useful work. Which one would you choose for performance? Apparently most of the phones are using the second. The mind boggles... Interesting point. The advantage of the first (via X) is that it uses a standard API, and if the GPU device drivers are well written then most of the hard work can be offloaded, making screen updates very fast, even if the screen is very big (=lots of memory buffer to move around). The advantage of the second (direct frame buffer) is that it is much quicker to implement on new hardware, and uses slightly less memory. The way I see it, using a direct frame buffer system such as Qtopia is sensible in an early version before the GPU device drivers are working, but after that there is little benefit. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 10:32, Dani Anon wrote: On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. It's not a reason at all. Neo is a free phone! If I wanted commercial applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'? Tell that to all the people using Wine under Linux. I'll use commercial app if they are worth the money. But i really don't see how someone developing a non-free (both in speech as in beer) should get their toolkit for free. When you expect people to pay for *your* software you should not be suprised when you have to pay for a toolkit yourself. The SDK appears to cost 146 euro, that should be an affordable investment for any commercial developer. I thing gp is right, c might be better than c++ for small devices and certainly you need to code in c++ to take advantage of qtopia components. Why whould plain C be better, what matters in the and is the binary that is spit out by the compiler. I don't see why a C++ compiler should produce a binary that is somehow less suitable for small devices. Theoretically two programs written it two totally different languages could still compile to identical binaries providing identical functionality. If your C program is indeed more suitable for small devices it just means your C++ compiler needs to be improved. You do realize that C++ was explicitly designed with embedded software in mind? Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. not really. qt-rantIn fact, coding with Qt is much faster than gtk. Ask people that have done both./qt-rant agree, anybody that has tried both knows it's like night and day, qt is miles ahead in ease of development. And if I where developing a pure basic phone, I'd drop the X server right away. But for a device like the Neo 1973 i'm not that sure. There are quit some existing applications I'd like to run on that thing and most of them are X applications. Losing X is good thing,not being able to use all that code out there is not. I'm not totaly convinced of either approach yet, I guess both have their place. AVee -- When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
I think you are misrepresenting the difference. I would write that as: 1. Application asks X to draw a line, then gets on with other stuff, or makes other calls while it waits. X calls the device driver which talks to the hardware GPU (using around 20 bytes of API call) which uses accelerated hardware to draw the line in the screen buffer. A few microseconds later X informs the application that the line has been drawn. 2. Application (via compiled in or dynamically linked libraries) talks directly to the memory mapped frame buffer. It does it's own geometry, area fill and transparency calculations, (wasting the perfectly good GPU that the hardware has) then directly updates several thousand memory locations to make the line appear on the screen. (flushing the CPU's cache in the process) While it is doing that it cannot do any other useful work. Wow, do you actually think you can write that and stand uncorrected? Why in your version of the second scenario there is no low level graphic support and in the first scenario there is? Why in the second scenario is there no hardware acceleration and in the first scenario there is? Why on the second scenario you assume the application has to do all the geometry instead of the operative system? I guess handicapping the second hypothetical studio subject must be the only way you can show the first scenario is less overhead but wow, I really didn't expect that level of blatant manipulation in this list. The second implementation can perfectly have gpu support, graphic acceleration and OS assisted geometry and all the stuff you wrote simply wouldn't happen; there's a pretty well known example of this, how was it called? Oh yes, *Microsoft Windows*. In fact, there's better support for everything you wrote on Windows than in Linux. Also, do you really think that's an accurate representation of what's happening in Openmoko vs any QTopia device for example? Applications make other calls while they wait? Yeah, sure... if they are not input dependant! In the time that stuff is drawn the component may have been closed by the user (just to provide an example) so are you sure you can get away with saying Oh its OK, that stuff is queued? In the second scenario you only have to wait for the GPU, in the first scenario you have to wait for the GPU and X. For a example of an operation is only logical that we make it blocking but of course it's more convenient for you that we make it non-blocking. But hey I like how you conveniently left unanswered my comment about how the FBUI and DirectFB projects exist solely to remove the X server overhead. Can you explain to me and them why they are wrong and how they have wasted all those months of development to solve a problem that just doesn't exist? Which one would you choose for performance? Apparently most of the phones are using the second. The mind boggles... Interesting point. The advantage of the first (via X) is that it uses a standard API, and if the GPU device drivers are well written then most of the hard work can be offloaded, making screen updates very fast, even if the screen is very big (=lots of memory buffer to move around). The advantage of the second (direct frame buffer) is that it is much quicker to implement on new hardware, and uses slightly less memory. The way I see it, using a direct frame buffer system such as Qtopia is sensible in an early version before the GPU device drivers are working, but after that there is little benefit. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
I can echo these views. I personally like a C based framework as I develop on my Neo in Scheme. I use a Scheme-to-C compiler called Chicken which happens to work extremely nicely with GTK+. I can develop much more efficiently/easily in Scheme than I can in C. I would not have this choice if I wanted to continue with Chicken using with a C++ framework. No doubt it is possible to integrate but what a pig it would be. Of course I am a very small minority taking this approach but at least I can if I want! It is good to have options. You could argue I am putting all my eggs in one basket (pardon the pun) but I have faith in GTK+. Arguing which framework is technically superior may be a bit like arguing about VHS vs Betamax. In the long run it might not matter. Some of us with go down one route and will be looking hard to find people to trade films with :) I have built an ipk of the Chicken Scheme system if anybody is tempted to the dark side? ;) John. Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 01:23:37 -0700 Quoting Ted Lemon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): This is an utterly pathetic excuse not to try something. It would have been, had I never attempted to get familiar with that language. But I have, a handful of times. And I concluded, many years ago, that it is not a language for me. I rest my case: if you want you can use c++ with GTK. But you cannot use c with QT. As far as I can perceive, making a c wrapper of a c++ library (and I do not mean c-looking code that compiles under c++ - I mean a library that makes heavy use of those ungodly quirks that c++ is burdened with) is a task that no sane individual might desire to embark into... But if/when such a wrapper becomes available, I will make sure to carve out half a day to gain some experience with it. So it's kind of mind-boggling that you were able to come up with so much prose to document your complete lack of knowledge on the topic. You are welcome to maintain your boggliness if it pleases you. I have not stated an absolute judgment of value from the programmer's point of view, of which I am not capable, since I have never programmed in QT (and I have never programmed in QT because it requires c++ - otherwise I would have given it a try by now, free or not free). I still prefer the look of Gnome to that of KDE, but this is purely an aesthetical judgment. I expect that with some effort I would be able to use Gnome themes on KDE. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. Case in point. This simply isn't true. You're saying things that you don't know to be true. Why would you do that? Hrmpf. How many X applications can you find in sourceforge? This translates to how many programmers who already can make use of one of the many tools that are available to generate an X-compatible executable? And on the other hand, how many people are there who can easily translate their ideas into a user interface that runs under Qtopia's windowing system? I do mean this when I say that X is easier than Qtopia. I have never programmed in Qtopia's environment, so I cannot state how easy or complex it may be. I see OpenMoko as a developer-oriented phone/system. I haven't even been able to get a build working. It only builds on one platform - the build is so brittle that if you don't have that platform, you can't get it to go. It's early days, so I don't count that against the development team, but this is another stunningly ignorant statement. Have you actually tried to develop an app for Openmoko yet? No, since I do not have an openmoko. I might have bought one had they not canceled the plan for a rebate for the second model. But I have had a look at the code. And I understand that the X running on OM will be basically the same X that currently runs on this laptop of mine from which I am writing this message (minus opengl, possibly. It will in any way be sensibly faster than the first X I worked with, back in '93, on that old Tseng Labs video card...). Once I correctly set up the cross-compiling chain of tools, I do believe that the very well-known window manager that is used by OM will not refuse to manage the windows of my humble executables, too. Carlo PS In your mail, you wrote 1) that I use pathetic excuses, 2) that I have complete lack of knowledge on topics that I write my prose about, 3) that I say things that I don't know to be true, 4) that I make multiple stunningly ignorant statements. Can you please keep these personal observations out of the conversation? Just for the sake of peace and harmony... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Am 25.09.2007 um 17:20 schrieb Dani Anon: But hey I like how you conveniently left unanswered my comment about how the FBUI and DirectFB projects exist solely to remove the X server overhead. Can you explain to me and them why they are wrong and how they have wasted all those months of development to solve a problem that just doesn't exist? It exists theoretically but the practical relevance depends on several factors. I have done some experiments on the OpenMoko and I believe that the framebuffer itself is the slowest part (don't know why). But X11 *is* already quite fast. I could achieve a lot of speed up in my GUI Framework (yes it is another choice!) by double buffering X11 (i.e. drawing offscreen first and then copying the modified block in a single bitmap copy command). In my GUI toolkit the main speed killer is the missing FPU in ARM processors which has to rely on FPU emulation. So, why optimize something that already works sufficiently? It is like washing whiter than white. But if there is someone who wants to optimize it further - why not? So - IMHO - the X11-Overhead is a neglectable problem. And the benefits of X11 overweight any drawbacks. Summary: I am happy with X11 on OpenMoko (and other handhelds). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/25/07, AVee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 25 September 2007 10:32, Dani Anon wrote: On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. It's not a reason at all. Neo is a free phone! If I wanted commercial applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'? Tell that to all the people using Wine under Linux. I'll use commercial app if they are worth the money. But i really don't see how someone developing a non-free (both in speech as in beer) should get their toolkit for free. When you expect people to pay for *your* software you should not be suprised when you have to pay for a toolkit yourself. The SDK appears to cost 146 euro, that should be an affordable investment for any commercial developer. Yep, but there's this undeniable fact that having 0 entry cost invites a whole new class of developers that you wouldn't have otherwise. I think we could perfectly choose QTopia and just handicap commercial developers, either of the options is better than having two options. I thing gp is right, c might be better than c++ for small devices and certainly you need to code in c++ to take advantage of qtopia components. Why whould plain C be better, what matters in the and is the binary that is spit out by the compiler. I don't see why a C++ compiler should produce a binary that is somehow less suitable for small devices. Theoretically two programs written it two totally different languages could still compile to identical binaries providing identical functionality. If your C program is indeed more suitable for small devices it just means your C++ compiler needs to be improved. You do realize that C++ was explicitly designed with embedded software in mind? I've said a couple of times that I prefer QTopia technically, and I personally prefer c++, I was just agreeing with GP on the language choice being a possible concern, because there is a couple of cons to requiring c++. But I agree with you on this. Also, Qtopia, by having no X server running in the background, makes it much more difficult for the average developer to bring his/her own window to the screen of the phone. not really. qt-rantIn fact, coding with Qt is much faster than gtk. Ask people that have done both./qt-rant agree, anybody that has tried both knows it's like night and day, qt is miles ahead in ease of development. And if I where developing a pure basic phone, I'd drop the X server right away. But for a device like the Neo 1973 i'm not that sure. There are quit some existing applications I'd like to run on that thing and most of them are X applications. Losing X is good thing,not being able to use all that code out there is not. I'm not totaly convinced of either approach yet, I guess both have their place. Also agree with you there, there are pros and cons to having an X server I was just answering to the people pretending that there are no cons at all, which is untrue. Dani AVee -- When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:48:21 +0200, Gabriel Ambuehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 25 September 2007 14:23:24 Steven Le Roux wrote: Ok, I am not a developper, but, I think the accelorometer has the goal to provide a good video rendering. Nitpick: An accelerometer measures physical acceleration and enables things like the Wiimote. What you're thinking of is a (graphics) *accelerator*. oops, language bug :) As you said, I was talking about the SMedia 2D/3D accelerator :) -- Steven Le Roux [EMAIL PROTECTED] xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
It may be worth mentioning that D also works well with straight C libs, but can't interface directly with C++. Its in the same league as C++ in terms of speed, while arguably being more elegant. I haven't worked with scheme since the 80's, in my intro to programming course! I'll have to check that out, I remember it being a very flexible and fun language. IIRC the gimp uses it in its scripting system. john wrote: I can echo these views. I personally like a C based framework as I develop on my Neo in Scheme. I use a Scheme-to-C compiler called Chicken which happens to work extremely nicely with GTK+. I can develop much more efficiently/easily in Scheme than I can in C. I would not have this choice if I wanted to continue with Chicken using with a C++ framework. No doubt it is possible to integrate but what a pig it would be. Of course I am a very small minority taking this approach but at least I can if I want! It is good to have options. You could argue I am putting all my eggs in one basket (pardon the pun) but I have faith in GTK+. Arguing which framework is technically superior may be a bit like arguing about VHS vs Betamax. In the long run it might not matter. Some of us with go down one route and will be looking hard to find people to trade films with :) I have built an ipk of the Chicken Scheme system if anybody is tempted to the dark side? ;) John. Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Dani Anon wrote: Yep, but there's this undeniable fact that having 0 entry cost invites a whole new class of developers that you wouldn't have otherwise. I think we could perfectly choose QTopia and just handicap commercial developers, either of the options is better than having two options. You are confusing 'commercial' with 'closed source'. No one says open source software cannot be sold commercially. You just have to offer and release your code to your customers should they want it. I don't see how charging a carpenter for a hammer is a handicap. To make his/her own hammer would cost more than it would to buy one from the local hardware store. You cannot hammer a nail very well without a hammer. A rock might work. -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote: Am 25.09.2007 um 17:20 schrieb Dani Anon: But hey I like how you conveniently left unanswered my comment about how the FBUI and DirectFB projects exist solely to remove the X server overhead. Can you explain to me and them why they are wrong and how they have wasted all those months of development to solve a problem that just doesn't exist? It exists theoretically but the practical relevance depends on several factors. I have done some experiments on the OpenMoko and I believe that the framebuffer itself is the slowest part (don't know why). But X11 *is* already quite fast. I could achieve a lot of speed up in my GUI Framework (yes it is another choice!) by double buffering X11 (i.e. drawing offscreen first and then copying the modified block in a single bitmap copy command). In my GUI toolkit the main speed killer is the missing FPU in ARM processors which has to rely on FPU emulation. So, why optimize something that already works sufficiently? It is like washing whiter than white. But if there is someone who wants to optimize it further - why not? So - IMHO - the X11-Overhead is a neglectable problem. And the benefits of X11 overweight any drawbacks. There may not be very much performance differences, but there is one more drawback of using Xlibs. File size and memory. -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Dani Anon wrote: On 9/25/07, Steven Le Roux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:32:46 +0200, Dani Anon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973 Date: mar 25 set 07 08:18:31 +0200 Quoting Dani Anon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal. It's not a reason at all. Neo is a free phone! If I wanted commercial applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'? Tell that to all the people using Wine under Linux. I Don't think there are so much... I fully agree with him to say Neo/OpenMoko goal is to become a *FREE* user friendly phone. Even if Qtopia could give bigger range, or bigger celebrity, it will not change the OpenMoko/OpenEmbedded mission, to provide a free framework/os People keep saying that but really, are you sure that openmoko goals exclude proprietary software? http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Commercial_models Of course they don't, because they are developing using the LGPL, which encourages commercial closed source. Linux is a perfectly free operative system but support for proprietary software isn't discouraged. Not by the operating system, or the LGPL, but by the culture surrounding it. How many commercial closed source applications are available for Linux? How many have you bought? Have you paid attention to what people say when someone releases closed source for Linux? How often have nvidia and ATI been harassed about their closed source? How many software have been released open source as a result of community pressure? Think of Oracle, Opera, vmware to name a few. In fact, one could argue that an open platform that makes proprietary development expensive is less free than a closed platform that makes proprietary development (as well as free development) free, so I think you are very wrong about this. Perhaps, but we aren't talking about closed platforms. To most commercial entities, software licensing is not as much as development costs. FIC is a company after all and I'm pretty sure that to them, the non-free nature of qtopia for proprietary usage would be a concern but that is good. FIC wants to sell hardware. -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 17:51, Dani Anon wrote: On 9/25/07, AVee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll use commercial app if they are worth the money. But i really don't see how someone developing a non-free (both in speech as in beer) should get their toolkit for free. When you expect people to pay for *your* software you should not be suprised when you have to pay for a toolkit yourself. The SDK appears to cost 146 euro, that should be an affordable investment for any commercial developer. Yep, but there's this undeniable fact that having 0 entry cost invites a whole new class of developers that you wouldn't have otherwise. I think we could perfectly choose QTopia and just handicap commercial developers, either of the options is better than having two options. I'm a profesional software developer, but I have never done any serious embedded development. I've seen a whole bunch of language, as such I will just use what comes along. Learning another yet another language or toolkit doesn't scare me, I do that all the time. However, I'll always pick the most clean, simple and well documented toolkit. If I'm to write software *for fun*, it better be fun. If the toolkit is too hard to use, badly designed, badly documented or simply taking too much time to learn I'll go and do someting else. There are dozens of projects out there and I've got enough ideas for about 5 livetimes of programming. As a developer, I'd pick Qtopia anytime. As a user, I'd like to see the NEO1973 as the ultimate GPS handheld, the ultimate smartphone and the ultimate PDA. To that end it simply *must* run a lot of software with little or no effort. You can talk for hours about 'inefficient', 'free', 'overhead' and whatever, but I just want view the PDF file in my email, use a *proper* webbrowser and run VNC. Most Linux applications use X, so if thats what it takes, make the thing run X apps. As a user, I definately want X. And if I were porting existing applications, I'd want X as well. So I think it is a good thing to have two options, isn't that what Open Source is about, the freedom to use what suits you best? AVee -- Beware of low-flying butterflies. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How many commercial closed source applications are available for Linux? How many have you bought? Have you paid attention to what people say when someone releases closed source for Linux? How often have nvidia and ATI been harassed about their closed source? How many software have been released open source as a result of community pressure? Me personally, I've purchased Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 4, and soon, UT2007 and Quake Wars. You'll note that the only closed-source software I've purchased are games. This applies to both Windows and Linux. I'm probably not your target market, but you asked. :-P -Steven ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 20:14:36 Carlo E. Prelz wrote: properly express my mental patterns. C++ did not cut my cake. No need to repeat the experience. I already know how to write what little user interface code I need to write, either in C or in Ruby, with GTK. Luckily I do not need to meddle with micro$oftland. If I'm not totally mistaken, Qt does have Ruby bindings. I know it has very good Python ones. I suppose it's a matter of taste, but trying to shoehorn OO into C is a horror to *me*. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Sep 25, 2007, at 11:14 AM, Carlo E. Prelz wrote: N. I just say that Qt has no C api. And this makes it unusable. For me. No mention of it being bad. The personal reason you've given for why you prefer Gtk to Qt is valid, for you. However, most of what you said had nothing to do with that - it was conjecture about the relative merits of GTK+X versus Qtopia. And it was factually incorrect, which implies that you didn't know it to be true. This is why I say that if you don't know something to be true, you shouldn't say it: you might be unknowingly repeating a falsehood. It's perfectly fine for you to express your personal experience about C++, but you have to understand that your experience isn't predictive. Just because it was that way for you doesn't mean it will be that way for me. When you interject your personal experience into a discussion about the pros and cons of something, and you can't say why that thing didn't work for you, you are creating ignorance in the mind of any reader who doesn't already have knowledge of the topic on which you are speaking. Which is why I'm trying to encourage you not to do so. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 25 September 2007 20:36:53 Lorn Potter wrote: Yep, but there's this undeniable fact that having 0 entry cost invites a whole new class of developers that you wouldn't have otherwise. I think we could perfectly choose QTopia and just handicap commercial developers, either of the options is better than having two options. You are confusing 'commercial' with 'closed source'. No one says open source software cannot be sold commercially. You just have to offer and release your code to your customers should they want it. From the sentiment on the list, it seems that the license model is wrong. Everybody is talking about free-to-do-whatever-I-want-to-do-with-it in a BSD style license. If the project really welcomes any kind of support and/or software, free and/or commercial, the type of license should have been BSD, because as it stands, it has very little to do with the GPL. I'm not implying GPL is a superior license but rather that from what I read on this list, people say GPL even though they mean BSD - both valid choices, as long as you don't confuse them, which happens quite regularly around here (like calling GPL-d software non-free). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
AVee wrote: On Tuesday 25 September 2007 10:32, Dani Anon wrote: On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thing gp is right, c might be better than c++ for small devices and certainly you need to code in c++ to take advantage of qtopia components. Why whould plain C be better, what matters in the and is the binary that is spit out by the compiler. I don't see why a C++ compiler should produce a binary that is somehow less suitable for small devices. Theoretically two programs written it two totally different languages could still compile to identical binaries providing identical functionality. If your C program is indeed more suitable for small devices it just means your C++ compiler needs to be improved. You do realize that C++ was explicitly designed with embedded software in mind? What I find surprising is that nobody has mentioned yet symbian s60. Its API is C++, and loads of phones use it. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
john [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I can echo these views. I personally like a C based framework as I develop on my Neo in Scheme. I use a Scheme-to-C compiler called Chicken which happens to work extremely nicely with GTK+. I can develop much more efficiently/easily in Scheme than I can in C. I would not have this choice if I wanted to continue with Chicken using with a C++ framework. No doubt it is possible to integrate but what a pig it would be. Of course I am a very small minority taking this approach but at least I can if I want! It is good to have options. You could argue I am putting all my eggs in one basket (pardon the pun) but I have faith in GTK+. You could use libsmoke from KDE to generate full bindings for the Qt API dynamically with maybe a few hundred lines of C glue to wrap the Smoke classes, and another few hundred lines of Scheme to make it feel nice. -- Corinne: rub a dub dub nekked in the tub ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 25/9/07 4:41 pm, john [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have built an ipk of the Chicken Scheme system if anybody is tempted to the dark side? ;) Personally I'd like a fully reflective on-board IDE/squeak-like environment (where there is no separation from applications and programming tools) based on the io language (www.iolanguage.com) using a totally new toolkit built for the purpose but I realise that I'm a pervert... :D On that subject it seems that someone is nearly as perverted as me and is working on a squeak environment for the neo: http://news.squeak.org/2007/09/20/squeak-running-on-fic-neo1973-open-source- phone/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
AVee wrote: C++ compiler needs to be improved. You do realize that C++ was explicitly designed with embedded software in mind? I'm curious where you got the idea that C++ was explicitly designed with embedded software in mind? Anyways... I don't know why the Qtopia vs. Openmoko thing has to continually pollute this list with rants. I don't see either going away, so why can't they both happily coexist. I've seen the argument that it splits the developers between two platforms, but that assumes all the developers would be willing to develop on one platform or the other. I don't see either Gnome or KDE dying anytime soon. Could Linux on the desktop have progressed quicker with a single prominent desktop environment over the past 10 years? Maybe, maybe not. One thing I think *is* certain is that competing software drives innovation. Sure, innovative features often are copied by the competition, but that benefits everyone in the end. I think there is a place for both Openmoko and Qtopia. Useful features and possibly even entire applications can be cloned/ported back and forth between the platforms. Artwork, sounds, etc can easily be shared. Can we please end this back and forth C vs. C++, Qt vs. Gtk, X11 vs no-X11, Openmoko vs Qtopia. I think most of us have seen plenty of these debates over the years and nothing constructive ever comes of them. -casey ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 20:40 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would you really say either gnome or is wasted effort and should be discontinued? Or vim/gnome,linux/bsd,gecko/webkit/mysql/postgres... Yes, it's my personal belief that these projects all represent wasted effort and that if they cooperated they'd achieve more. I always get a nice warm fuzzy feeling whenever I see a forked project merge (Compiz Fusion, Webkit/KHTML) You don't think competition has it's advantages? A bigger project doesn't necessarily equal better results. There are significant differences between (for example) KDE and GNOME that make it useful to have a choice. They are tackling the same problem but in different ways. It is very important people can experiment and try different things. Anything else would be to stifle innovation and progress. Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Thomas Wood wrote: On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 20:40 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would you really say either gnome or is wasted effort and should be discontinued? Or vim/gnome,linux/bsd,gecko/webkit/mysql/postgres... Yes, it's my personal belief that these projects all represent wasted effort and that if they cooperated they'd achieve more. I always get a nice warm fuzzy feeling whenever I see a forked project merge (Compiz Fusion, Webkit/KHTML) You don't think competition has it's advantages? A bigger project doesn't necessarily equal better results. There are significant differences between (for example) KDE and GNOME that make it useful to have a choice. They are tackling the same problem but in different ways. It is very important people can experiment and try different things. Anything else would be to stifle innovation and progress. Regards, Thomas I didn't realise Qtopia was */proprietary/* http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=ensa=Xoi=spellresnum=0ct=resultcd=1q=proprietaryspell=1 IE no X server. Given that I retract my earlier comments on preferring QT for the quality docs and IDE. I'd rather plug away at developing in GTK than that. -- Jonathan Spooner Nationwilcox Systems Ltd Tel: 0121 3544345 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 18 September 2007 18:00:51 Giles Jones wrote: Typically the argument for QT is ease of programming, there's a good IDE called KDevelop. GTK's argument typically is that it's GPL and faster. Except Qt nowadays actually is GPL (GTK+ being only LGPL), to be more precise :) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 10:28:55 Jonathan Spooner wrote: I didn't realise Qtopia was */proprietary/* It's no longer, it's fully GPL now. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=ensa=Xoi=spellresnum=0ct=resultcd=1 comments on preferring QT for the quality docs and IDE. I'd rather plug away at developing in GTK than that. Well if you want X11, Qt should run on the Neo just fine... signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
My thoughts that competition has it's advantages and both of the technologies will find their fans. But Trolltech and Openmoko should cooperate with each other first of all in terms of integration of PIM data. Do you really need dual-booting (or other possibility to start either Qtopia or Openmoko) without possibility to synchronize address book etc between them? Of course, the best case from my point of view is to have the same low-level infrastructure (I mean API's to GSM-part, to PIM-part, etc.) for both Qtopia and Openmoko, but differ in the GUI part. But it is too late to talk about this as I can see :). This is something someone else touched on. If you're writing an application, abstract all the complicated stuff away from the UI code, then you can make whatever kind of UI you want. NetworkManager I think is a perfect example of this. It would be good to have a defined interface to access PIM info, make calls etc. I believe LiPS has been set up to do just that. So perhaps it would be better to make moth OpenMoko Qtopia PE LiPS complient. I heard that the LiPS forum hired a load of GPE PE developers to develop a reference implementation. It might be worth looking at GPE PE and lifting some of the standardised bits. I don't know, perhaps this is happening already? One more thing on duplication of effort... It's nice to see OpenHand developers working on OpenMoko, are there any plans to merge Sato into OpenMoko? There's currently 4 GTK+ mobile phone frameworks I know of (GPE PE, Sato, OpenMoko Hiker). Surely no one can claim that much duplicated effort is a good thing? I can see the argument for KDE/Gnome, GTK+/QT, but not 4 projects all relying on the same technology all doing exactly the same thing. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Calls for more collaboration are quite common, but I can't help but feel that people assume it is easier than it actually is. There is the GMAE effort which tries do achieve exactly what is mentioned here, which is further codesharing between all these efforts. Whats holding up collaboration is rarely ever ill will or lack of seeing how collaboration is useful. I mean these people choose existing open source technologies just because they could see such benefits. But in reality a lot of issues makes it a slow process, like internal time constraints, disputes about code quality, licensing challenges, disagreement about technology choices and so on. For instance I wouldn't be surprised if OpenMoko face the challenge of needing most of their components to be LGPL/BSD licensed instead of GPL, which puts a lot of code out of their reach. Cause even if the OpenMoko phones will be shipping with all free software there might be further stuff getting integrated downstream for which a demand for GPL licensing would be unacceptable. Like Vodafone or some other network operator putting some branded special software on phones distributed through them as one example. Another good example is that a 'competing' project might have a piece of code which supposedly do what you need, but your engineers when looking at it decides that its coded in a shoddy fashion and thus will risk getting your project bogged down in trying to bugfix it. Or the code is Java based and your platform doesn't ship with Java etc. So please be aware that 'duplication' of effort isn't just because people are stupid or selfcentered, its often happens due slightly different needs or things which can't be easily publicized. So as someone who have been to multiple GMAE meetings I know that people like OpenMoko, Maemo, Sato, Hiker and so on are trying to increase code sharing, but it does take time. Christian This is something someone else touched on. If you're writing an application, abstract all the complicated stuff away from the UI code, then you can make whatever kind of UI you want. NetworkManager I think is a perfect example of this. It would be good to have a defined interface to access PIM info, make calls etc. I believe LiPS has been set up to do just that. So perhaps it would be better to make moth OpenMoko Qtopia PE LiPS complient. I heard that the LiPS forum hired a load of GPE PE developers to develop a reference implementation. It might be worth looking at GPE PE and lifting some of the standardised bits. I don't know, perhaps this is happening already? One more thing on duplication of effort... It's nice to see OpenHand developers working on OpenMoko, are there any plans to merge Sato into OpenMoko? There's currently 4 GTK+ mobile phone frameworks I know of (GPE PE, Sato, OpenMoko Hiker). Surely no one can claim that much duplicated effort is a good thing? I can see the argument for KDE/Gnome, GTK+/QT, but not 4 projects all relying on the same technology all doing exactly the same thing. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 20:40 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would you really say either gnome or is wasted effort and should be discontinued? Or vim/gnome,linux/bsd,gecko/webkit/mysql/postgres... Yes, it's my personal belief that these projects all represent wasted effort and that if they cooperated they'd achieve more. I always get a nice warm fuzzy feeling whenever I see a forked project merge (Compiz Fusion, Webkit/KHTML) Maybe you should let Microsoft buy them all out and then there'd only be one way. :-) If that's not what you want, be careful what you wish for. Alternately, if you were appointed tzar for a day, do you believe you have sufficient wisdom to decide which one has the right approach? Choice is good. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 14:03 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] This is something someone else touched on. If you're writing an application, abstract all the complicated stuff away from the UI code, then you can make whatever kind of UI you want. NetworkManager I think is a perfect example of this. It would be good to have a defined interface to access PIM info, make calls etc. I believe LiPS has been set up to do just that. So perhaps it would be better to make moth OpenMoko Qtopia PE LiPS complient. I heard that the LiPS forum hired a load of GPE PE developers to develop a reference implementation. It might be worth looking at GPE PE and lifting some of the standardised bits. I don't know, perhaps this is happening already? With regards to the contacts and calendar applications in OpenMoko, they use Evolution Data Server to store their data, in the same way Evolution does on the desktop. In turn, this stores the data in the vCard and iCal formats, which are industry standard. One more thing on duplication of effort... It's nice to see OpenHand developers working on OpenMoko, are there any plans to merge Sato into OpenMoko? There's currently 4 GTK+ mobile phone frameworks I know of (GPE PE, Sato, OpenMoko Hiker). Surely no one can claim that much duplicated effort is a good thing? I can see the argument for KDE/Gnome, GTK+/QT, but not 4 projects all relying on the same technology all doing exactly the same thing. Firstly, Sato is not a mobile phone framework in any sense at all. It does not include any applications or services that would make a mobile phone useful. Sato is simply a visual style. Secondly, the OpenMoko framework is different from projects such as Hiker because it only contains functions and classes that actually give benefit to the user and developer, rather than wrapping existing technologies for the sake of it. This means OpenMoko contains much less overhead than other frameworks and allows developers greater flexibility. Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip This is something someone else touched on. If you're writing an application, abstract all the complicated stuff away from the UI code, then you can make whatever kind of UI you want. NetworkManager I think is a perfect example of this. It would be good to have a defined interface to access PIM info, make calls etc. I believe LiPS has been set up to do just that. So perhaps it would be better to make moth OpenMoko Qtopia PE LiPS complient. I heard that the LiPS forum hired a load of GPE PE developers to develop a reference implementation. It might be worth looking at GPE PE and lifting some of the standardised bits. I don't know, perhaps this is happening already? I asked this question on the G(PE)^2 listserv - both projects started very close in time to each other, have different backing and slightly different goals, but there is reasonable overlap and it is my understanding from one of the core G(PE)^2 members that they are working with the openmoko team to collaborate as much as possible. I don't really have any detail beyond that. Rgds, j. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Gabriel Ambuehl wrote: On Tuesday 18 September 2007 22:58:00 Lorn Potter wrote: Not X11 like all other systems. This has better performance and is in my eyes the perfect solution for embedded devices. There is no great performance difference between x11 and fb. As long as X11 renders to FB, that's true. However, with the GPU in GTA02 that may not be true at all as in fact, Mickey mentioned on IRC yesterday that fb operations may well be *slower* on GTA02 than on GTA01. For unaccelerated framebuffer vs. accelerated X11, yes. But we are planning on using those accel chips too. I don't know enough about the differences between Qt and Qtopia (aside of the fact that Qtopia draws to the fb directly), but if Qtopia app scan run on Qt, we might well end up seeing that on GTA02 as Qt/X11 will get the GPU acceleration for free? At that point, GTK and Qt(opia) could happily coexist like they do on the desktop. -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
As long as X11 renders to FB, that's true. However, with the GPU in GTA02 that may not be true at all as in fact, Mickey mentioned on IRC yesterday that fb operations may well be *slower* on GTA02 than on GTA01. I don't know enough about the differences between Qt and Qtopia (aside of the fact that Qtopia draws to the fb directly), but if Qtopia app scan run on Qt, we might well end up seeing that on GTA02 as Qt/X11 will get the GPU acceleration for free? At that point, GTK and Qt(opia) could happily coexist like they do on the desktop. What acceleration? You don't get hardware acceleration for free. Just because there's hardware there to accelerate drawing operations doesn't mean it gets used. I have raised this question several times: What kind of driver are you planning on? (I don't think I saw that answered yet, sorry if I missed it) KDrive, DRI, etc... We don't disclose this information yet, sorry. As soon as there is something working, it will be in our subversion, though. That reply came from Harold of all people. Surely it goes against the ideals of OpenMoko? I guess the main reason I'm for a Qtopia based framework over a GTK+/X framework is the technology and the ease of accelerating drawing operations. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how Linux graphics stacks work. Now, Qtopia seems highly integrated (and much simpler as a result). It is also exceptionally well documented thanks to doc.trolltech.com. X on the other hand seems mind-blowingly complicated and I have really struggled to understand how it works. Documentation is apauling and I can't even find any decent books on how it works. But, I will now try and explain how I understand it works and please, PLEASE correct me where I'm wrong! :-) X is client server architecture which uses sockets. The server draws things on behalf of the clients. Rather than clients having to understand the X protocol, Xlib was developed to provide a drawing API. XLib is a very limited API for drawing lines, rectangles and arcs. XLib also allows clients to send a pixmap to the server to render. As time went on, line rectangles and arcs became a bit limiting so toolkits like GTK started rendering vector graphics into pixmaps and just used XLib to send those pixmaps to the server. Copying pixmaps over sockets was slow so shared memory was used instead for local clients. Pretty soon a more advanced vector graphics API was needed and so Cairo was born. Cairo rasterizes vector graphics into a client-side pixmap which is then drawn onto the screen using XRender, allowing compositing. Soon, people wanted anti-aliased, scaleable text, which XLib couldn't provide and so Pango was born. Pango uses Cairo to render text allowing both vector graphics and text to appear together. Pango, Cairo XLib are wrapped up in the GDK (The API of which is pretty well documented at http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdk/index.html). GTK+ widgets are rendered using a theme engine, which uses the GDK to render widgets. I.e. An application defines a widget, a theme engine draws that widget via GDK. That could be rendered using GDK's wrappers for XLib or cairo (typically cairo for desktops). So that's how I understand GTK/Cairo/Pango/X hangs together, but as I said before others know far more than I do. ;-) Now, given that is how the graphics stack hangs together, where do you off-load operations to hardware? What operations _can_ you off load to hardware? From what I've read, the most computationally expensive operations are ones which involve accessing large blocks of memory, e.g. block fills block copies. These typically can be performed by hardware. So, when you drag a window round the screen, hardware can be used to copy the window to it's new location. Block fills block copies are the only operations (other than cursors) most hardware accelerated x servers implement, which is fine, because that's where most of the work is. I mentioned earlier that cairo uses Xrender to copy compose rasterized graphics onto the screen. Some graphics hardware can accelerate some of the XRender operations, however, in X.org it seems the current driver model makes that very difficult, resulting in limited acceleration and thus slowness (different drivers accelerate different XRender operations). To fix that, Glitz was created to allow cairo to render to a GL context and use the 3D hardware to accelerate the composition, sidestepping XRender completely. Lets look at OpenMoko's rendering path. Thomas Wood mentioned yesterday, OpenMoko currently uses a pixmap based theme engine. The pixmaps are (IMO) beautiful. They are all shiny and curved and have a nice orange-black gradient. While they look great, they are slow as the pixmaps need to be copied from off-screen buffers to the frame buffer. My guess is that's why the OpenMoko interface is a bit slugish (only a guess, I suspect others on this list know a lot more about this
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 20:59 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Firstly, Sato is not a mobile phone framework in any sense at all. It does not include any applications or services that would make a mobile phone useful. Sato is simply a visual style. Strange, the description on http://www.pokylinux.org/ says: Sato is our experimental reference/example GTK+/Matchbox based PDA/smartphone like user interface environment aimed primarily at handheld devices with very high DPI VGA displays. It features a full suite of PIM applications, multimedia playback, web browsing, games and more. Huh?? User interface environment basically means the look and feel. It doesn't mean that it includes any sort of framework. It also says it is simply a PDA/smartphone *like* interface, not that it actually includes any usable phone software. I'll get this updated if it's causing confusion. Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Firstly, Sato is not a mobile phone framework in any sense at all. It does not include any applications or services that would make a mobile phone useful. Sato is simply a visual style. Strange, the description on http://www.pokylinux.org/ says: Sato is our experimental reference/example GTK+/Matchbox based PDA/smartphone like user interface environment aimed primarily at handheld devices with very high DPI VGA displays. It features a full suite of PIM applications, multimedia playback, web browsing, games and more. Huh?? User interface environment basically means the look and feel. It doesn't mean that it includes any sort of framework. It also says it is simply a PDA/smartphone *like* interface, not that it actually includes any usable phone software. I'll get this updated if it's causing confusion. Yes, sorry, I mis-understood this. I'd get rid of the bit that says It features a full suite of PIM applications, multimedia playback, web browsing, games and more. too if it doesn't actually contain any applications. ;-) I should have downloaded it and tried it out rather than assume things. winmail.dat___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how Linux graphics stacks work. ... I will now try and explain how I understand it works and please, PLEASE correct me where I'm wrong! :-) That is the most concise, clear and understandable explanation I have ever seen about all these packages that keep slowing down the load-up time of my shell or Emacs window in each new version of Linux ;-) Thank you! -- Rod ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
X provides an OpenGL API. So if you want to do fancy stuff like Compiz, you do it with OpenGL. X does not however provide an OpenGL ES API, neither does GDK. Qtopia on the other hand does allow OpenGL ES integration. In fact Beryl/Compiz-type effects and composition is already avaliable on Qtopia (acording to their documentation - no screen shots). To do that on KDrive you'd have to implement the XComposite extension and write a complete compositing manager which knows how to speak OpenGL ES. A massive task. I suspect this is a moot point anyway as I doubt we'll ever see an OpenGL ES library/driver for the SMedia. I really hope I'm wrong about this as the visual effects which could be achieved would be amazing, way better than the iPhone. winmail.dat___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 20:57 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] I mentioned earlier that cairo uses Xrender to copy compose rasterized graphics onto the screen. Some graphics hardware can accelerate some of the XRender operations, however, in X.org it seems the current driver model makes that very difficult, resulting in limited acceleration and thus slowness (different drivers accelerate different XRender operations). To fix that, Glitz was created to allow cairo to render to a GL context and use the 3D hardware to accelerate the composition, sidestepping XRender completely. And there are already plans for someone to do the necessary XRender coding to support GTA02. Lets look at OpenMoko's rendering path. Thomas Wood mentioned yesterday, OpenMoko currently uses a pixmap based theme engine. The pixmaps are (IMO) beautiful. They are all shiny and curved and have a nice orange-black gradient. While they look great, they are slow as the pixmaps need to be copied from off-screen buffers to the frame buffer. My guess is that's why the OpenMoko interface is a bit slugish (only a guess, I suspect others on this list know a lot more about this than I do!). Thomas mentioned yesterday that the new theme engine for OpenMoko used XLib (though GDK) rather than pixmaps or cairo. That's going to be much faster because there are no big copies involved. However, I don't understand how using XLib is going to produce the same graphical results. There's no facility for doing gradients or shadows or anything pretty? Because coding simple gradients is trivial and I've already done it :-) The code for the Moko GTK+ engine is already available in SVN and once it's more fully featured I will be posting screenshots on my blog. All in all, the great thing about OpenMoko and the Neo1973 is that you're free to choose whatever path you wish to take. If you want to use Qtopia on your Neo1973 then you are more than welcome to do so! There are many many different Linux distributions and probably almost as many graphical user interface projects. One of the great things about the Free Software philosophy is choice and the Neo1973 is one of the first phones that gives you that ability to choose every single bit of software that you use on it. Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Thomas Wood wrote: All in all, the great thing about OpenMoko and the Neo1973 is that you're free to choose whatever path you wish to take. If you want to use Qtopia on your Neo1973 then you are more than welcome to do so! There are many many different Linux distributions and probably almost as many graphical user interface projects. One of the great things about the Free Software philosophy is choice and the Neo1973 is one of the first phones that gives you that ability to choose every single bit of software that you use on it. This is exactly correct, and I agree. So does Trolltech. viva la Neo! -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/19/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: X does not however provide an OpenGL ES API, neither does GDK. Qtopia on the other hand does allow OpenGL ES integration. ... I suspect this is a moot point anyway as I doubt we'll ever see an OpenGL ES library/driver for the SMedia. I really hope I'm wrong about this After the docs come out, it should be possible to write a Mesa driver right? My impression is OpenGL ES is just a subset of regular OpenGL; it's not so different that Mesa APIs would not work. Then the whole X/GLX/Mesa/driver/DRI stack could be used. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/19/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote (with the wrong kind of word-wrap, unfortunately): X is client server architecture which uses sockets. The server draws things on behalf of the clients. Rather than clients having to understand the X protocol, Xlib was developed to provide a drawing API. XLib is a very limited API for drawing lines, rectangles and arcs. It covers a bit more - window allocation and manipulation, and rendering text with bitmap fonts come to mind. XLib also allows clients to send a pixmap to the server to render. As time went on, line rectangles and arcs became a bit limiting so toolkits like GTK started rendering vector graphics into pixmaps and just used XLib to send those pixmaps to the server. Copying pixmaps over sockets was slow so shared memory was used instead for local clients. That's about right. I agree that it is very inelegant. I think XRender does take advantage of whatever acceleration the X driver implements. The GTA02 will have an SMedia grapgics accelerator. As it's not been disclosed how the SMedia chip is going to be used, I have to guess and my guess is that a KDrive server will be written which will accelerate block fills and block copies. I sure hope they do more than that. If there is offscreen memory, bitmap glyphs for the fonts that you are using can be cached, and copied onto onscreen memory without much intervention from the CPU, so even with just accelerated blitting, you get accelerated text too. (And the bitmaps are rendered initially by freetype, so by using bitmaps in the cache you don't lose smoothness.) Next I would hope they would accelerate line-drawing, and fills of some kinds of primitives (polygons, and/or rectangles, triangles). Bonus points for antialiasing those (but I'm sure the chip can do it, so it shouldn't be hard). I'd like to see accelerated Bezier curves too, but not sure if that's possible. For OpenGL probably the most important things would be textures mapped onto triangles, and Gouraud-shaded triangles. If you use Mesa in mostly-software mode and just accelerate those, it's already a big help for many kinds of rendering. On the other hand, we have Qtopia. In Qtopia, an application defines QT Widgets, which are drawn using a QPaintEngine into an off-screen buffer then copied to the frame buffer using a QScreen. Writing an accelerated graphics driver is as simple as inheriting from QPaintEngine QScreen and re-implementing the methods the hardware has acceleration for and leaving the other methods alone for software fallback. The process of writing an accelerated driver is also very well documented with some great examples to use. Yep. It's more direct, and I don't quite understand the argument that X can be just as fast if you hack it in just the right ways. There are still more layers in an X-based architecture. But X has other advantages like being old and venerable, and network transparency (which embedded devices often don't support anyway), choice of window managers, and being able to run apps that don't use the toolkit you happen to have chosen, or use XLib directly. Plain XLib apps tend to be amazingly tiny and wicked fast (just because their rendering is simple by definition). I think they are going to continue coexisting for a long time, and it's fine with me if OpenMoko mainstream keeps using GTK and X (because it works well enough), but personally I prefer working on something new rather than depending on X and all its warts. But that's just me - I'm having some fun working directly with /dev/fb0 and making sure I understand what I'm writing from the bottom up. I hope it will be faster and take less memory. I would also hope after the docs come out, I can understand the chip well enough to accelerate some operations. I think for the ultimate in eye candy, using OpenGL pretty directly with as few layers as possible between your OpenGL app and the hardware would be the way to go. (I'm pretty sure that's what Apple does.) But OpenGL doesn't do windowing, so you either have to write some new windowing code or depend on X to manage that part, or just run every app full-screen. And almost every idea along these lines has some sort of implementation out there somewhere already... like Fresco, for example. http://www.fresco.org/screenshots.html Then again: Do not try this at home: This setup eats up the memory of your Zaurus and it is so slow that you can hardly call it interactive. :-) I haven't tried it myself. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
And there are already plans for someone to do the necessary XRender coding to support GTA02. That's fantastic news! Why on earth did Harold say that the fact that an accelerated kdrive was being written couldn't be disclosed? What's the problem in telling the community? Not that it matters really. If OpenMoko's going for an XLib based theme engine, why bother with XRender? What else uses it other than Cairo? Surely xvideo would be a more useful extension to focus on? Because coding simple gradients is trivial and I've already done it :-) Great, but soon people will want to do ever more complex vector graphics. Perhaps if/when XRender is accelerated, the switch could be made to cairo? All in all, the great thing about OpenMoko and the Neo1973 is that you're free to choose whatever path you wish to take. If you want to use Qtopia on your Neo1973 then you are more than welcome to do so! There are many many different Linux distributions and probably almost as many graphical user interface projects. One of the great things about the Free Software philosophy is choice and the Neo1973 is one of the first phones that gives you that ability to choose every single bit of software that you use on it. Sure, and I'm not disputing the fact that you can run whatever you want is a good thing. I just wanted to clarify why development of OpenMoko was continuing given that there is now a more complete and mature alternetive and I think this has been answered: 1) Redundency is good, if Qtopia fails for some reason, there's an alternative. 2) A greater number existing applications can be ported easily to an X based framework. There is also presedent in the Maemo project of where this has been very useful. I'd like to add a 3rd: Competition breeds innovation. :-) Cheers, Tom ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 18 September 2007 08:18, Mauro Iazzi wrote: before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.926075 5578 and http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5429713730.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW5q8SpY7t4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOG_mtSEMgs http://www.qtopia.net/modules/devices/openmoko.php Enjoy Andy ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 Ironic given one of their Greenphone guys was slagging the OpenMoko project a while back. --- G O Jones ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
I hate to say it but in my experience at least, its a dream developing apps using QT esp given the nice IDE in comparison to using GTK. QT just has the docs and organised feel which makes it easy. Regards, Jon Mauro Iazzi wrote: before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 and http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5429713730.html In short: Qtopia is going to be fully GPL'd (telephony applications included, which weren't) and is being ported to Neo1973. Some comments (personal, I can be wrong...): 1) I hope this stops the Qtopia dismissal because not-GPL'd arguments. No one can doubt of Trolltech commitment to Open Source world, whether you like them being commercial or not. 2) collaboration can be complete now, if not sharing the source (at least not fully, because of the different stacks), at least in borrowing design patterns. 3) this could be seen also as a temporary solution for those which want to use the Neo _right_now_ (despite it still being developers-only) 4) it stresses the no-software-lock-in that Neo wants to have, in contrast to all other phones. This is freedom. Seems to me a great step in making the Neo a big platform. I can't wait to see it. cheers, mauro ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Jonathan Spooner Nationwilcox Systems Ltd Tel: 0121 3544345 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Hi, great news, but what does this mean? We need a posting of the projekt management, will Neo s Menue switch to QT? This means a GTK application will not work? Or: Any QT-Applicaiton will work now automatically? We need this info, for a decision, to stick to the library either a GTK-Gui or the existing QT-Gui. To not saddle on the wrong horse.. please send a notice Applications for Neo, should have a GTK or QT gui? thanks On 9/18/07, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 and http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5429713730.html In short: Qtopia is going to be fully GPL'd (telephony applications included, which weren't) and is being ported to Neo1973. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Michael Schmidt wrote: Hi, great news, but what does this mean? We need a posting of the projekt management, will Neo s Menue switch to QT? This means a GTK application will not work? Or: Any QT-Applicaiton will work now automatically? We need this info, for a decision, to stick to the library either a GTK-Gui or the existing QT-Gui. To not saddle on the wrong horse.. please send a notice Applications for Neo, should have a GTK or QT gui? Applications for the _Neo_ can have whatever gui the developer wants to build (or as many - there are several apps that support multiple rendering environments) Applications for _*openmoko*_ should have a GTK+-2 gui. openmoko isn't switching to QT. there is just now another gui available. for myself - I much prefer GTK interfaces. and will be sticking with GTK on the Neo (when I buy) Rgds, j. thanks On 9/18/07, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 and http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5429713730.html In short: Qtopia is going to be fully GPL'd (telephony applications included, which weren't) and is being ported to Neo1973. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Dual-boot? (was Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973)
Is there a bootloader option for the Neo that could let developers decide whether to boot into OpenMoko or QTopia? If so, it could provide a convenient fallback option in case tinkering with one of the systems caused it to stop working. You could boot into QTopia to surf the net and debug the OpenMoko partition, and vice versa. On 9/18/07, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 and http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5429713730.html In short: Qtopia is going to be fully GPL'd (telephony applications included, which weren't) and is being ported to Neo1973. Some comments (personal, I can be wrong...): 1) I hope this stops the Qtopia dismissal because not-GPL'd arguments. No one can doubt of Trolltech commitment to Open Source world, whether you like them being commercial or not. 2) collaboration can be complete now, if not sharing the source (at least not fully, because of the different stacks), at least in borrowing design patterns. 3) this could be seen also as a temporary solution for those which want to use the Neo _right_now_ (despite it still being developers-only) 4) it stresses the no-software-lock-in that Neo wants to have, in contrast to all other phones. This is freedom. Seems to me a great step in making the Neo a big platform. I can't wait to see it. cheers, mauro ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
In short: Qtopia is going to be fully GPL'd (telephony applications included, which weren't) and is being ported to Neo1973. Fantastic news! What works? Looking at the youtube videos, it appears that the phone, SMS, bluetooth power management are all working? Can you actually place and recieve calls? I'm sure OpenMoko development will continue, but a good question is why? I don't really want to start a flame war, but I do think the question should raised. Why spend so much effort creating yet another GTK+ based framework? What would happen if all the people working on OpenMoko focused their efforts on improving Qtopia on the neo instead? Surely we'd get a fast, stable and functional phone stack a lot quicker? Cheers, Tom winmail.dat___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 18/09/2007, Jonathan Spooner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hate to say it but in my experience at least, its a dream developing apps using QT esp given the nice IDE in comparison to using GTK. QT just has the docs and organised feel which makes it easy. Regards, Jon with the drawback that _everything_ will need to be Qt based, in contrast with openmoko, which will let you run any X app written out there (resolution issues aside) and, if the CPU is powerful enough, even Qt apps. Seems to me it will just be better when it will be finished. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 18/09/2007, Giles Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : before someone beats me to it. http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578 Ironic given one of their Greenphone guys was slagging the OpenMoko project a while back. I remember, I suppose he wasn't speaking for all Trolltech, or they have just changed their minds... anyway it's good to see they are now working for the Greater Good(TM) . It seems a gain for all, also given they may even be stopping pushing the greenphone now that it has inferior hardware and same software of Neo. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
I've enjoyed watching the openmoko project grow - and I think it's a massive boost to the philosophy behind the project (and possibly to the perceived sustainability of the project) that another company is able to take the hardware specs and port their applications to the neo1973. I think it's good to have the qt stuff going on, but openmoko need to stick with the direction in which they're headed. Source sharing behind the scenes may benefit many of the core developers - but the openmoko project has set a fantastic example... were it not for openmoko then would qtopia ever have been able to become GPL'd. Congratulations to Sean for his untiring work on Software Freedom. I think today we've seen a dream come true (TM). On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:00:51 GMT, Giles Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : Hi, great news, but what does this mean? We need a posting of the projekt management, will Neo s Menue switch to QT? This means a GTK application will not work? Or: Any QT-Applicaiton will work now automatically? Quite simply if you have an X server running and you launch an app using QT it will read the libraries and launch. Same with a GTK app. Of course there may not be room in the ROM for both, but it's possible to install the libraries on a memory card and use a symbolic link or entry in the library path so they can be found. Typically the argument for QT is ease of programming, there's a good IDE called KDevelop. GTK's argument typically is that it's GPL and faster. OpenMoko should stick to what it is doing already. --- G O Jones ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 18/09/2007, Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:45:51 +0200, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hate to say it but in my experience at least, its a dream developing apps using QT esp given the nice IDE in comparison to using GTK. QT just has the docs and organised feel which makes it easy. with the drawback that _everything_ will need to be Qt based Why is that? Qtopia does not make use of X. It uses direct rendering and draws with its very own primitives. It is one the primary reason for the different naming, I think... I also think you can hook to draw directly in the framebuffer, but there would be no policy for interacting with other apps, which you would have using X. Everyone could draw over you and viceversa. They chose to make it so, so there is no expectation this will change. It's a little more locked than what OpenMoko would be. In the meantime, it works well being limited, so it's a legitimate choice. @Giles Qt if fully GPL. Qtopia (the full stack: Phone Edition) used to be only partly GPL'd (a large part indeed called OpenSource Edition), but by October will completely be GPL. There are really no license issues with this software. This should be made clear. The problem people have is for it to be commercial (i.e. sold). It's a different issue. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Michael Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : Hi, great news, but what does this mean? We need a posting of the projekt management, will Neo s Menue switch to QT? This means a GTK application will not work? Or: Any QT-Applicaiton will work now automatically? Quite simply if you have an X server running and you launch an app using QT it will read the libraries and launch. Same with a GTK app. Of course there may not be room in the ROM for both, but it's possible to install the libraries on a memory card and use a symbolic link or entry in the library path so they can be found. Typically the argument for QT is ease of programming, there's a good IDE called KDevelop. GTK's argument typically is that it's GPL and faster. OpenMoko should stick to what it is doing already. --- G O Jones ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:45:51 +0200, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hate to say it but in my experience at least, its a dream developing apps using QT esp given the nice IDE in comparison to using GTK. QT just has the docs and organised feel which makes it easy. with the drawback that _everything_ will need to be Qt based Why is that? -- Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Thanks, but why is the Neo phone not a small laptop? that all can be installed, at least for the needed libraries. So a GTK gui still makes sense... Greenphone then can as well join OPENMOKO platform, and if greenphone uses only QT, is then the GTK application working? - no, if the GTK-Library is not installed. So we need a software/library proove at the startup and a path to the extending memory card with the proove of the installed libraries.. And that for every phone... Why is this announcement done now, and the code of QTopia 4.3 released in late Oktober? This should be speeded up from the project management, as the applications cannot wait weeks with no coding... And I guess in the later all will be QT... then the GTK is an old fashion as maybe laptop applicaitons as well switch from GTK to QT. This should be decided soon, a) if NEO gets enough RAM to run both b) if the operating system can have both libraries by default c) if there is a direction from the project management, wanting this or that for the new development.. d) why Qtopia is released so late.. as well the preview FTP of it is not working.. what is this for an annoucement??? Thanks for answering! Mike On 9/18/07, Giles Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quite simply if you have an X server running and you launch an app using QT it will read the libraries and launch. Same with a GTK app. Of course there may not be room in the ROM for both, but it's possible to install the libraries on a memory card and use a symbolic link or entry in the library path so they can be found. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/18/07, Michael Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what is the difference of openmoko and neo? Thought neo is the phone and openmoko the project running it. So a GTK gui would work even with QTopia phone? Ok then there is a development interest for GTK... OpenMoko is an open-source GTK based software platform for open phones. The Neo1973 is an open phone, related to OpenMoko as it was the original reference platform. They are related, but not one thing. This is the difference. Trolltech have now done what should be done with open hardawre: they made their Qtopia software platform for open phones available for / usable on the Neo1973. With open platforms, comes freedom of choice. Mike ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 18 September 2007, Michael Schmidt wrote: what is the difference of openmoko and neo? Thought neo is the phone and openmoko the project running it. The Neo1973 is the phone hardware FIC are making. OpenMoko is an open platform for phones and other similar hardware, and builds on the GTK+ toolkit among other things. QTopia is an open platform for phones and other similar hardware, and is built using the QT toolkit. So a GTK gui would work even with QTopia phone? That probably depends what you mean when you say a QTopia phone. I don't think you could generally run a GTK app under QTopia, but I could be wrong. Ok then there is a development interest for GTK... Many developers prefer it. On 9/18/07, Joshua Layne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Applications for the _Neo_ can have whatever gui the developer wants to build (or as many - there are several apps that support multiple rendering environments) Applications for _*openmoko*_ should have a GTK+-2 gui. openmoko isn't switching to QT. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Dual-boot? (was Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973)
On 9/18/07, Ryan Prior [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there a bootloader option for the Neo that could let developers decide whether to boot into OpenMoko or QTopia? If so, it could provide a convenient fallback option in case tinkering with one of the systems caused it to stop working. You could boot into QTopia to surf the net and debug the OpenMoko partition, and vice versa. They both should use the same kernel, so the only difference would be which init scripts get started at boot time. So just have the startup scripts display a selection menu for which environment to fire up at boot (and possibly add an icon to each environment to re-launch the alternate interface). But anyhow, no boot loader option is needed if you stick with the same kernel. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Dual-boot? (was Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973)
please not another gnome/kde parallel world system both libraries ( and I guess GTK embedded into QT) should be installed and work. and for the Main window: I guess soon it is QT. But please not a double boot option! read the QT-Experience report from one user on the list. QT is great ! that does not mean GTK is bad. But I experienced KDE much better than Gnome.. think users will / want use QT... On 9/18/07, Derek Pressnall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/18/07, Ryan Prior [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there a bootloader option for the Neo that could let developers decide whether to boot into OpenMoko or QTopia? If so, it could provide a convenient fallback option in case tinkering with one of the systems caused it to stop working. You could boot into QTopia to surf the net and debug the OpenMoko partition, and vice versa. They both should use the same kernel, so the only difference would be which init scripts get started at boot time. So just have the startup scripts display a selection menu for which environment to fire up at boot (and possibly add an icon to each environment to re-launch the alternate interface). But anyhow, no boot loader option is needed if you stick with the same kernel. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
OpenMoko should stick to what it is doing already. I second this. QT is nice, but OpenMoko can contain the nice QT too! I'm looking forward for OM! Simon ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
fwiw -- I just installed the qtopia images, and am _very_ impressed. On bootup my phone told me I had new text messages, and displayed them very easily. I even sent a text without issue. Phone calling works, for both incoming and outgoing calls, the only hitch was that I had to manually set the alsa levels using gsmhandset.state. This is by far the most usable my neo has ever been, so I will most likely keep using the qtopia image until the moko images do calling and sms without as much fiddling around. cheers to qtopia, -scott Mike Hodson wrote: On 9/18/07, Michael Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what is the difference of openmoko and neo? Thought neo is the phone and openmoko the project running it. So a GTK gui would work even with QTopia phone? Ok then there is a development interest for GTK... OpenMoko is an open-source GTK based software platform for open phones. The Neo1973 is an open phone, related to OpenMoko as it was the original reference platform. They are related, but not one thing. This is the difference. Trolltech have now done what should be done with open hardawre: they made their Qtopia software platform for open phones available for / usable on the Neo1973. With open platforms, comes freedom of choice. Mike ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/18/07, Giles Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : Quite simply if you have an X server running and you launch an app using QT it will read the libraries and launch. Same with a GTK app. Of course there may not be room in the ROM for both, but it's possible to install the libraries on a memory card and use a symbolic link or entry in the library path so they can be found. There is one other issue, assuming QT Phone is done the sameway QTE is on the Sharp Zaurus. The QT Embedded environment doesn't use X, but instead draws directly onto the framebuffer, so you can't easily run QTE and X apps side by side. Now I'm not sure how compatible QTE is to the regular QT X toolkit, if it is a 100% drop in replacement then you should be able to use the QT Embedded userland (apps, etc.) and link them against QT X. Typically the argument for QT is ease of programming, there's a good IDE called KDevelop. GTK's argument typically is that it's GPL and faster. A couple other differences, QT is C++ based, whereas GTK is C based, so depending on what your preferences are... Also, isn't GTK licenesed as LGPL, whereas QT is GPL? So commercial developers will need to pay for a seperate license for QT if they make non-GPL apps, whereas GTK's license is more commercial app friendly. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Alexey Feldgendler wrote: On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:45:51 +0200, Mauro Iazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hate to say it but in my experience at least, its a dream developing apps using QT esp given the nice IDE in comparison to using GTK. QT just has the docs and organised feel which makes it easy. with the drawback that _everything_ will need to be Qt based Why is that? Qtopia is a complete application stack which is not based on the traditional technologies used in unix. Especially problematic is that they have a gui-server which works directly on the framebuffer. Not X11 like all other systems. This has better performance and is in my eyes the perfect solution for embedded devices. But that is the reason why you can not just compile any X11 application for the phone and run it. But this issue is more or less a non-issue, because there is a x-server for qtopia avaiblable. But if you want to have native applications which fit right in the framework you have to use Qt and C++. And the other problem is that QT has different views about things like PIM storage (addressbook, calendar ...), phone systems (gsmd vs. the qtopia phone-driver system) and so on. Both systems just don't fit very well together. And i like both concepts... But thats how it is. Opensource is just about freedom to choose. The more choices the better... Regards Tilman Baumann ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Sep 18, 2007, at 9:48 AM, Tilman Baumann wrote: But thats how it is. Opensource is just about freedom to choose. The more choices the better... My big question about Qtopia for Neo is whether or not Trolltech will be willing to take back changes. I've had some challenges in the past getting them to believe bug reports that I sent in, although they were extremely professional about it - I probably just needed to be more persistent. So I think that having the two projects competing is probably good in terms of keeping people honest. However, if I can cross-develop for Qtopia from my Mac, that's going to make a huge difference for me. :'} ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 9/18/07, john [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also prefer GTK+ and have invested some time developing an application on my Neo with it. I find it very easy to develop and test on my GNOME based desktop (Ubuntu) and re-compile for the Neo. I hope OpenMoko continues down the same route. John (putting a vote in for GTK+) +1 for that vote... however... I eventually see my neo with a nice menu in uboot, asking me if I want to boot into Openmoko, QTopia or FreeBSD (eventually :) With freedom comes choice, and choice generally brings cool things with it. My 2c ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Has anyone seen these benchmarks: http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2006/10/benchmarks.html It compares Cairo (what GTK+ uses) against QT. When it comes to rendering, I believe Qtopia QT use the same code. So ignoring X, Qt was respectively 7, 5 and 6 times faster. Than Cairo in those plain tests. Now factor in the fact that QWS has a lot less overhead than X and a smaller memory footprint. Can someone _please_ give me a technical reason why they believe GTK+ is better? The only arguments I've seen on this list are philosophical ones. The only technical argument has been that you can run applications on the phone and have them appear on your desktop thanks to X. Surely there is a better reason? I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to feel that the OpenMoko developer's ego is a big driving force behind developing the OpenMoko stack. winmail.dat___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anyone seen these benchmarks: http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2006/10/benchmarks.html It compares Cairo (what GTK+ uses) against QT. When it comes to rendering, I believe Qtopia QT use the same code. So ignoring X, Qt was respectively 7, 5 and 6 times faster. Than Cairo in those plain tests. Now factor in the fact that QWS has a lot less overhead than X and a smaller memory footprint. Can someone _please_ give me a technical reason why they believe GTK+ is better? The only arguments I've seen on this list are philosophical ones. The only technical argument has been that you can run applications on the phone and have them appear on your desktop thanks to X. Surely there is a better reason? Portability would be the main reason. I guess. But hey. Philosophical reasons are damn good reasons if you have to work with that stuff! Many people just cant stand the pain using C++. ;-) Someone had to make that choice. And it was made. I bet for good reasons. If you don't like it? Ignore it. Make it better. Whatever. No one made a decision for _you_. My first thought when Nokia released Maemeo was they are stupid. But success proves them right. When OpenMoKo started, these experience where already made. I would do the same today. Tilman Baumann ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Can someone _please_ give me a technical reason why they believe GTK+ is better? The only arguments I've seen on this list are philosophical ones. The only technical argument has been that you can run applications on the phone and have them appear on your desktop thanks to X. Surely there is a better reason? Very simple, i would think it is about compatibility of code. With openmoko, it is a small difficulty to port a normal linux application to openmoko. With Qtopia, it would probably involve a rewrite of major sections of the code. Simon ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Very simple, i would think it is about compatibility of code. With openmoko, it is a small difficulty to port a normal linux application to openmoko. With Qtopia, it would probably involve a rewrite of major sections of the code. So you're saying Qtopia makes it harder to port desktop applications designed to be used with a 17+ monitor, keyboard and mouse to a device with no buttons and a 2.8 touch screen. I'd argue that the problems with porting desktop applications are far greater than the underlying framework. Are there any instances of a desktop application being ported to the OpenMoko which is usable? The only one I've seen is gpaint on OpenHand's Poky Linux, and that looked fiddly at best. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On 18/09/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Very simple, i would think it is about compatibility of code. With openmoko, it is a small difficulty to port a normal linux application to openmoko. With Qtopia, it would probably involve a rewrite of major sections of the code. Also, one possible solution to this would be to run an x server which outputed to a QWS window. I seem to remember something like this being developed for OpenZaurus years ago. I would have thought something like Xvfb or Xephyr could be modified to display output into a QWS window? If you don't like it? Ignore it. Make it better. Whatever. No one made a decision for _you_. True. Who am I to challenge the decisions of others? I understand that, but I just can't bare to see duplication of effort in community projects, it's such a waste of such talented people. But you can't please everyone; that's why there are different projects to fill different needs/requests. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Vincent ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Very simple, i would think it is about compatibility of code. With openmoko, it is a small difficulty to port a normal linux application to openmoko. With Qtopia, it would probably involve a rewrite of major sections of the code. Also, one possible solution to this would be to run an x server which outputed to a QWS window. I seem to remember something like this being developed for OpenZaurus years ago. I would have thought something like Xvfb or Xephyr could be modified to display output into a QWS window? If you don't like it? Ignore it. Make it better. Whatever. No one made a decision for _you_. True. Who am I to challenge the decisions of others? Because it is too late. :) I understand that, but I just can't bare to see duplication of effort in community projects, it's such a waste of such talented people. No it's not. Its the reason why opensource is so diverse and successful. Would you really say either gnome or is wasted effort and should be discontinued? Or vim/gnome,linux/bsd,gecko/webkit/mysql/postgres... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Very simple, i would think it is about compatibility of code. With openmoko, it is a small difficulty to port a normal linux application to openmoko. With Qtopia, it would probably involve a rewrite of major sections of the code. So you're saying Qtopia makes it harder to port desktop applications designed to be used with a 17+ monitor, keyboard and mouse to a device with no buttons and a 2.8 touch screen. I'd argue that the problems with porting desktop applications are far greater than the underlying framework. Are there any instances of a desktop application being ported to the OpenMoko which is usable? The only one I've seen is gpaint on OpenHand's Poky Linux, and that looked fiddly at best. counter-example: claws for maemo. Full grown mailer. Little redesign on the GUI (Theme!) and suddenly the best mailer for maemo was born. Some fine tuning later and it felt just right on that platform. maemo-mapper. Best app for maemo. Was based on GPSDrive. pidgin and xchat where also made into mobile maemo apps with quite acceptable interfaces. And many other good examples are on maemo.org Graned, this are examples for the Nokia770 which has a bigger screen than the Neo. But i would say tit proves the point Tilman ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Very simple, i would think it is about compatibility of code. With openmoko, it is a small difficulty to port a normal linux application to openmoko. With Qtopia, it would probably involve a rewrite of major sections of the code. Also, one possible solution to this would be to run an x server which outputed to a QWS window. I seem to remember something like this being developed for OpenZaurus years ago. I would have thought something like Xvfb or Xephyr could be modified to display output into a QWS window? If you don't like it? Ignore it. Make it better. Whatever. No one made a decision for _you_. True. Who am I to challenge the decisions of others? I understand that, but I just can't bare to see duplication of effort in community projects, it's such a waste of such talented people. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 19:13 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anyone seen these benchmarks: http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2006/10/benchmarks.html It compares Cairo (what GTK+ uses) against QT. When it comes to rendering, I believe Qtopia QT use the same code. So ignoring X, Qt was respectively 7, 5 and 6 times faster. Than Cairo in those plain tests. Hi, I'd just like to mention that OpenMoko is not using Cairo for rendering, so this comparison is not relevant to OpenMoko. We are currently using a temporary pixmap based theme. In fact, just this morning I started writing the replacement theme engine for OpenMoko that uses direct X rendering (that is, it uses GDK rather than Cairo). Since I was also testing Qtopia on the Neo1973 this morning, I can say that the speed of Qtopia rendering and the new GDK based engine I wrote are very similar. Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
Would you really say either gnome or is wasted effort and should be discontinued? Or vim/gnome,linux/bsd,gecko/webkit/mysql/postgres... Yes, it's my personal belief that these projects all represent wasted effort and that if they cooperated they'd achieve more. I always get a nice warm fuzzy feeling whenever I see a forked project merge (Compiz Fusion, Webkit/KHTML) PS: Thanks for the examples. It's by far the most convincing argument I've seen yet. :-) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tuesday 18 September 2007 18:00:51 Giles Jones wrote: Typically the argument for QT is ease of programming, there's a good IDE called KDevelop. GTK's argument typically is that it's GPL and faster. Actually. GTK's argument is that it is LGPL and thus free for use by commercial apps whereas Qt is GPL and closed source, so commercial developers need to license the SDK. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Sep 18, 2007, at 9:28 AM, Scott Rushforth wrote: Phone calling works, for both incoming and outgoing calls, the only hitch was that I had to manually set the alsa levels using gsmhandset.state. That's a helpful hint. It appears to be the case that audio doesn't work for other apps as well - e.g., the alarm clock doesn't make any noise. I've also noticed that when I try to use bluetooth from Qtopia, my bluetooth daemon on my Mac hangs hard - it takes a reboot to get it back. Obviously a Mac bug, but it makes using the software a little painful, since I need my Mac to make it work. :'} Having played around with Qtopia now, I have a couple of observations. The UI is tight - it looks good, and generally does what you expect it to do. It's a lot more complete than the OpenMoko UI, so even people who love gtk might want to take a look at it for ideas. The dev kit appears to be linux-686 only for now, but it would be easy to build a set of gnu cross tools on OS X, so this would be an easy platform to target for people who are running OSX. The libraries in the current dev kit should work with the cross-compiler no matter what host is used. Someone said that they have invested a lot of work in GTK and wouldn't want to switch. I'd just like to point out that in general it's bad practice to deeply marry your back end and UI code, precisely because it leads you to this kind of thinking. You should try to keep them as separate as possible. It's a little extra work up front, but it pays off in a big way on the back end. Someone who wants to ultimately target OpenMoko/GTK, but wants a working phone now, might want to consider using Qtopia for now and then swapping out the Qtopia front-end for a GTK front-end later. Particularly if you're already familiar with GTK programming, this shouldn't be difficult. I think that the GTK front end for the Neo has a lot of potential that the Qtopia front end may miss, so a strategy that borrows from both systems would be good for us early adopters. Er, the dev kit appears to be missing openssl, which could be a problem. Also, announcements aside, I don't see a link to the source code on the Qtopia/Neo page, so not all promises have yet been kept. Trolltech has been really good about releasing source code in the past, so I'm not worried about this, but without source, developing will be more painful. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
