Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
W dniu 13.02.2014 07:26, Kalle Vahlman pisze: The other question here is will users prefer (or rather appreciate) the Jolla-screened apps in Harbour over the user-screened apps from OpenRepos. And again, what could be a better argument about allowing a certain API in Harbour than a handful of five star apps that use it in OpenRepos? Hi Kalle, well if Harbour QA would be doing so well why the flashlight app with some hidden data gathering passed it (Artems little provocation :))? That shows that Jolla QA doesn't have to be better than community QA in terms of user security and privacy. That also means that the better defense would be some security solution like Smack. I'm not a fan nor hater of OpenRepos - I never used it anywhere, but restrictive Harbour approach is also not the best way. So the thing is that either we need Harbour to change like Attila suggested or we need another solution. I think that we need something in between and not only for open source apps (I guess there are lot of people who would like to do commercial closed apps, but for now they have a choice between restrictive Harbour or non-restrictive OpenRepos. Regards, Filip ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
On 13/02/14 12:29, Filip Kłębczyk wrote: well if Harbour QA would be doing so well why the flashlight app with some hidden data gathering passed it (Artems little provocation :))? That shows that Jolla QA doesn't have to be better than community QA in terms of user security and privacy. Exactly. Store QA (harbour or any other) is largely *NOT* about security/privacy/quality. It's just about sanity-checking the basic functionality of the app. Best regards, Attila Csipa ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
On 12/02/14 12:36, Timur Kristóf wrote: I posted the stuff to together so we can continue the discussion online: https://together.jolla.com/question/27052/roundtable-discussion-jolla-harbour-apis/ My personal advice is - don't overthink it. The bottom line/driver is the user experience. It's super-easy to overthink and overengineer in the hope that strong and restrictive policies will somehow protect you. In both my personal and professional experience, they largely won't, as at some point there will be a change of behaviour/policy even in those supposedly stable APIs or there will be that weird app that actually depended on a bug, and the framework fix broke it. Life of a platform vendor is hard. The other thing I'd like to highlight for the cases WHEN YOU HAVE LIMITED REPOSITORY TESTING BANDWIDTH (yes, that's all caps), it IMHO shouldn't be the repository QA that tries to validate all versions and use-cases. There is a reason why in appstores it's the users who give the stars and comments, and not the repo QA. Repo QA is more about will it start and will it burn your house down. If it breaks later on, annoys, users will one-star it and it will sink to the bottom of the store search. Tough luck, life of a app developer is hard, too. What's happening right now is the exact opposite - apps that have perfectly fine user experience are turned down because they link to verboten libs (even if the app would still work fine if the lib went away). At the same time you can publish the world's most inefficient and annoying app if it uses the right libs and services. Finally, there is the segment about hackability and open development. The current *harbour* limits are IMO worse than what we had even in the Ovi days - the intent of why some parts of the system are off limits doesn't matter, if in the end that prevents people making/getting cool apps to people - remember Aegis? That was also a tool to guard platform, users and developers alike. If in the end all I can make is a Flappy bird or Doodle jump, your platform doesn't stick out the tiniest bit (on the contrary) from the others - at that point it's really tempting to just go full Android and say your problem if an APK doesn't work on a Jolla/Sailfish device. I can take a one-star rating with pure profanity as the comment to my face a lot easier than hard-policies that prevent me from getting (hopefully cool) stuff to people. Best regards, Attila Csipa ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
Attila, you are totally right (in my opinion at least). Can you please post your opinion to the together thread so that those of us who don't read mailing lists can find it too? :) On Wed Feb 12 2014 14:06:16 GMT+0100 (CET), Attila Csipa wrote: On 12/02/14 12:36, Timur Kristóf wrote: I posted the stuff to together so we can continue the discussion online: https://together.jolla.com/question/27052/roundtable-discussion-jolla-harbour-apis/ My personal advice is - don't overthink it. The bottom line/driver is the user experience. It's super-easy to overthink and overengineer in the hope that strong and restrictive policies will somehow protect you. In both my personal and professional experience, they largely won't, as at some point there will be a change of behaviour/policy even in those supposedly stable APIs or there will be that weird app that actually depended on a bug, and the framework fix broke it. Life of a platform vendor is hard. The other thing I'd like to highlight for the cases WHEN YOU HAVE LIMITED REPOSITORY TESTING BANDWIDTH (yes, that's all caps), it IMHO shouldn't be the repository QA that tries to validate all versions and use-cases. There is a reason why in appstores it's the users who give the stars and comments, and not the repo QA. Repo QA is more about will it start and will it burn your house down. If it breaks later on, annoys, users will one-star it and it will sink to the bottom of the store search. Tough luck, life of a app developer is hard, too. What's happening right now is the exact opposite - apps that have perfectly fine user experience are turned down because they link to verboten libs (even if the app would still work fine if the lib went away). At the same time you can publish the world's most inefficient and annoying app if it uses the right libs and services. Finally, there is the segment about hackability and open development. The current *harbour* limits are IMO worse than what we had even in the Ovi days - the intent of why some parts of the system are off limits doesn't matter, if in the end that prevents people making/getting cool apps to people - remember Aegis? That was also a tool to guard platform, users and developers alike. If in the end all I can make is a Flappy bird or Doodle jump, your platform doesn't stick out the tiniest bit (on the contrary) from the others - at that point it's really tempting to just go full Android and say your problem if an APK doesn't work on a Jolla/Sailfish device. I can take a one-star rating with pure profanity as the comment to my face a lot easier than hard-policies that prevent me from getting (hopefully cool) stuff to people. Best regards, Attila Csipa ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list -- Timur Sent from my Jolla ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
W dniu 12.02.2014 14:06, Attila Csipa pisze: My personal advice is - don't overthink it. The bottom line/driver is the user experience. Excellent post! The result was easy the predict - developers start to prefer OpenRepos than Harbour. Someone really overthinked the whole allowed API/libs story in Jolla Store. Regards, Filip ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
2014-02-12 Filip Kłębczyk fklebc...@gmail.com: W dniu 12.02.2014 14:06, Attila Csipa pisze: My personal advice is - don't overthink it. The bottom line/driver is the user experience. Excellent post! The result was easy the predict - developers start to prefer OpenRepos than Harbour. The other question here is will users prefer (or rather appreciate) the Jolla-screened apps in Harbour over the user-screened apps from OpenRepos. And again, what could be a better argument about allowing a certain API in Harbour than a handful of five star apps that use it in OpenRepos? -- Kalle Vahlman, Movial Creative Technologies Inc. Porkkalankatu 20, FI-00180 Helsinki Tel +358 9 8567 6400 Fax +358 9 8567 6401 www.movial.com ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
On 09/02/14 14:52, David Greaves wrote: On 09/02/14 11:28, Putze Sven wrote: As pointed out from others, it's not simply done with the Qt documentation. The Sailfish OS is built upon many libraries, frameworks and layers. But which one is to use? Qt. Seriously. You asked for an API. Jolla supports the Qt API precisely because it is a single, high level, app-suitable API that is well managed and open. It provides a significant degree of platform independence by abstracting a large amount of platform capability provided by those underlying layers; there is not much 'limited' about it :) Even the list of Qt libs at https://github.com/sailfish-sdk/sdk-harbour-rpmvalidator/blob/master/allowed_libraries.conf is fairly skimpy. Skimpy to the point that even all the Qt essential modules are not covered. The fact that Qt itself is a bit, well, optimistic when it says They are available on all supported development platforms and on the tested target platforms is a different matter. With the loss and current slow rebuilding of the mobility functionally, feature-rich/low-level development is on the hard side. Back in the Harmattan days this was the exact reason why there was the QtSDK for the high-level app-developer and a Platform SDK for all the people who didn't mind their hands getting dirty and getting an incompatibility or two as things moved on. Attila ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
Hi, On 03.02.2014, at 16:58, David Greaves david.grea...@jolla.com wrote: On 03/02/14 15:29, Putze Sven wrote: Hi there, during Fosdem I spoke to some people about this, even to Carsten Munk from Jolla itself (not in the depth and detail of this mail, I must admit) and he suggested to write this in the mailing list, so those of Jolla who should be concerned have a chance to answer this question and I really would like to hear some official statements here. Did you manage to get to the round-table event? - we spent a fair bit of time talking about APIs there; we also openly discussed the issues we face. I know that the community people there wanted to continue the discussion. Yes, I got there but many people of the mailing list did not. From my point of view there is a discussion to be continued, one of the reasons I brought this topic up here. But IMHO it's not *just* a community thing, Jolla can't simply flinch and point at the community when it's getting unpleasant. Of course they can, but IMHO they shouldn't ;-) What does a developer need to write quality apps? An API and a documentation of such. So far there is a quite limited API available and therefore we don't see too many apps out there. How will you write a sophisticated app, if the API is not available or it is not allowed to use or is only known to those with Maemo/Meego history? A quick response: we support the Qt API and rather than developing our own proprietary one we're working hard to support the open one as it grows. The Qt documentation is extensive and superb :) As pointed out from others, it's not simply done with the Qt documentation. The Sailfish OS is built upon many libraries, frameworks and layers. But which one is to use? Is naming the building blocks enough? I am not writing this to run down other people or to make Jolla look bad. I am staying a pain in the ass because I truly believe that there is a gap and it needs to be filled. If you only want to address the geeky Linux approved developer with Meego background, this may be just enough to keep this eco system alive. Even if it does not seem this way right now, I *want* you to have success! If you want to attract mobile developers that are in the iOS, Android or even Windows Mobile universe right now, you need to offer them something more. Right now they are in a comfort zone. Besides that the Qt documentation is extensive and maybe extraordinary for an open source project, but it has much headroom for improvement^^. Using it in Sailfish Silica apps is less well documented but is improving (and honestly is mainly a tutorial issue for new developers - not an API docs issue). That depends on the definition of a new developer. If *new* means new to the platform then it's exactly the kind of developer and the problems they will have, that's what the whole topic is about. Try to see it from this perspective: I *am* new to the platform, hence not (yet) wearing rose-colored glassed. And maybe - just maybe - I (still) ask the right questions. BR. Sven When I write you, it's not so much you as in David, it's more like in Jolla ;-) signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
Hi, 2014-02-03 16:29, Putze Sven skrev: What does a developer need to write quality apps? An API and a documentation of such. I would like to add best practices and experience sharing, which is exactly what StackOverflow provides me as a developer in other projects. In my opinion is a place for QA a good way to share experience that takes a long time to gain. I'm not sure yet how this is best done for Sailfish development - launch a QA site targeted at Sailfish developers , use StackOverflow, use together.jolla.com, or something else? This is also asked as a question at together.jolla.com: https://together.jolla.com/question/26003/sailfish-app-developer-qa/ Regards, Erik ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
On 09/02/14 11:28, Putze Sven wrote: Hi, On 03.02.2014, at 16:58, David Greaves david.grea...@jolla.com wrote: On 03/02/14 15:29, Putze Sven wrote: What does a developer need to write quality apps? An API and a documentation of such. So far there is a quite limited API available and therefore we don't see too many apps out there. How will you write a sophisticated app, if the API is not available or it is not allowed to use or is only known to those with Maemo/Meego history? A quick response: we support the Qt API and rather than developing our own proprietary one we're working hard to support the open one as it grows. The Qt documentation is extensive and superb :) As pointed out from others, it's not simply done with the Qt documentation. The Sailfish OS is built upon many libraries, frameworks and layers. But which one is to use? Qt. Seriously. You asked for an API. Jolla supports the Qt API precisely because it is a single, high level, app-suitable API that is well managed and open. It provides a significant degree of platform independence by abstracting a large amount of platform capability provided by those underlying layers; there is not much 'limited' about it :) Not only that it permits us to provide an API usable by C++ and QML/js at a cost that we can manage. Having said that, we do need to look to see where there are gaps. What functionality are you looking for that is not either supported or planned to be supported by an API exposed by Qt? If you do want to tinker outside of the store API and enter general linux programming then you have the freedom to do that too; however Jolla simply does not have the resources to maintain and/or document all the various systems and libraries which make up Mer/SailfishOS over and above the various resources that exist out there on the web (and in the source). David ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
[SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
Hi there, during Fosdem I spoke to some people about this, even to Carsten Munk from Jolla itself (not in the depth and detail of this mail, I must admit) and he suggested to write this in the mailing list, so those of Jolla who should be concerned have a chance to answer this question and I really would like to hear some official statements here. Let's just assume the business model of Jolla is selling phones and/or operating systems (that is not meant as a joke neither as rant, I simply don't know their business model and they don't need to tell me, to make that clear - referring to http://stezz.blogspot.de/2013/10/jolla-community-and-innovation.html here). But for the sake of convenience I further presume they want to sell phones. Doesn't seem too absurd to me. Jolla must sell phones to pay their bills in the end. More sales = easier life (I am simplifying here). What brings more sales? A phone that is somehow attractive to the user. So far Jolla lived from the geek factor and there is nothing wrong about that but geeks alone are IMHO not enough to pay future bills. What may be attractive to Mr. and Mrs. Average? A phone that has a somehow *sexy* image? Maybe. A phone that comes together with an attractive eco system (and I chose the words eco system here with thought)? Yes! What makes an eco system attractive? Many quality *native* apps. *Native* is the keyword here, because many and sometimes quality apps can be found on any other platform ou there. Only *native* apps come with the user interface that distinguish a Jolla phone from other phones (from the user perspective). What does a developer need to write quality apps? An API and a documentation of such. So far there is a quite limited API available and therefore we don't see too many apps out there. How will you write a sophisticated app, if the API is not available or it is not allowed to use or is only known to those with Maemo/Meego history? Maybe there are not so many developers interested in SailfishOS? Fosdem clearly showed a lot of interest! What will draw the attention of a developer to this eco system if not a way to make money and/or easy development? Making money out of the harbour store is not possible (yet), so it could only be the latter (ignoring the geek factor here). So please, please, give us APIs and documentation. Does the API change? So what? Life is change and a changing API is a zillion times better to have than none at all. Yes, there is some level of frustration in these words here, but I hope they don't come across as a rant. They are meant as constructive criticism and maybe as a a broad hint 8) BR. Sven signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
Hi everybody, I too find documentation a bit missing... But it is not much about APIs, but system level documentation. Qt documentation is good, at least for the parts that are still actively maintained. But SailfishOS uses Qt, on top of wayland, systemd, pulse,gstreamer and telepathy, and a bunch of other services. Open source package documentation can be very good, or completely missing. Moreover, to achjeve the same thing I may use a Qt based API, or, say, DBUS messages. So I think that more than the APIs, it is the list of allowed or preferred services that is needed. SailfishOS as a Linux distribution is quite modern, and it would help to know more about its plumbing. Just my 2 cents. Best regards, Luciano On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 5:59 PM, christopher.l...@thurweb.ch wrote: Hi all my experience is that are a vast amount of apis out there: There is all the Qt stuff, the Qt add-ons, Nemo packages, and lower-level stuff like telepathy and GST. The problem is not the lack of APIs, but the choice of APIs. Which is the best one to use?. Then if you hit on a likely API, and find some good examples on the interweb, then it is not sure that that API will fully work on the Jolla (although this is likely to improve with every update as the Jolla matures). And if the chosen API works from a technical point of view, then that does not mean that harbour will permit it ... although this too should improve with time. On the whole I have found the Qt documentation to be very good. Where things get a bit shaky is using esoteric things like gaining device resource permissions (e.g permission to use the LED, or to access the phones contacts). For this sort of thing I often have to resort to the source code (which at work we call the ultimate documentation .8-) ) mfg Chris Zitat von David Greaves david.grea...@jolla.com: On 03/02/14 15:29, Putze Sven wrote: Hi there, during Fosdem I spoke to some people about this, even to Carsten Munk from Jolla itself (not in the depth and detail of this mail, I must admit) and he suggested to write this in the mailing list, so those of Jolla who should be concerned have a chance to answer this question and I really would like to hear some official statements here. Did you manage to get to the round-table event? - we spent a fair bit of time talking about APIs there; we also openly discussed the issues we face. I know that the community people there wanted to continue the discussion. What does a developer need to write quality apps? An API and a documentation of such. So far there is a quite limited API available and therefore we don't see too many apps out there. How will you write a sophisticated app, if the API is not available or it is not allowed to use or is only known to those with Maemo/Meego history? A quick response: we support the Qt API and rather than developing our own proprietary one we're working hard to support the open one as it grows. The Qt documentation is extensive and superb :) Using it in Sailfish Silica apps is less well documented but is improving (and honestly is mainly a tutorial issue for new developers - not an API docs issue). Yes there are some APIs in the mobile space that are not part of the Qt release yet - Qt 5.2 will introduce more. David ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list -- Luciano Montanaro Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API?
+11 From: Luciano Montanaro Date: 2014-02-04 01:10 To: Sailfish OS Developers CC: David Greaves Subject: Re: [SailfishDevel] When does Jolla give us an API? Hi everybody, I too find documentation a bit missing... But it is not much about APIs, but system level documentation. Qt documentation is good, at least for the parts that are still actively maintained. But SailfishOS uses Qt, on top of wayland, systemd, pulse,gstreamer and telepathy, and a bunch of other services. Open source package documentation can be very good, or completely missing. Moreover, to achjeve the same thing I may use a Qt based API, or, say, DBUS messages. So I think that more than the APIs, it is the list of allowed or preferred services that is needed. SailfishOS as a Linux distribution is quite modern, and it would help to know more about its plumbing. Just my 2 cents. Best regards, Luciano On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 5:59 PM, christopher.l...@thurweb.ch wrote: Hi all my experience is that are a vast amount of apis out there: There is all the Qt stuff, the Qt add-ons, Nemo packages, and lower-level stuff like telepathy and GST. The problem is not the lack of APIs, but the choice of APIs. Which is the best one to use?. Then if you hit on a likely API, and find some good examples on the interweb, then it is not sure that that API will fully work on the Jolla (although this is likely to improve with every update as the Jolla matures). And if the chosen API works from a technical point of view, then that does not mean that harbour will permit it ... although this too should improve with time. On the whole I have found the Qt documentation to be very good. Where things get a bit shaky is using esoteric things like gaining device resource permissions (e.g permission to use the LED, or to access the phones contacts). For this sort of thing I often have to resort to the source code (which at work we call the ultimate documentation .8-) ) mfg Chris Zitat von David Greaves david.grea...@jolla.com: On 03/02/14 15:29, Putze Sven wrote: Hi there, during Fosdem I spoke to some people about this, even to Carsten Munk from Jolla itself (not in the depth and detail of this mail, I must admit) and he suggested to write this in the mailing list, so those of Jolla who should be concerned have a chance to answer this question and I really would like to hear some official statements here. Did you manage to get to the round-table event? - we spent a fair bit of time talking about APIs there; we also openly discussed the issues we face. I know that the community people there wanted to continue the discussion. What does a developer need to write quality apps? An API and a documentation of such. So far there is a quite limited API available and therefore we don't see too many apps out there. How will you write a sophisticated app, if the API is not available or it is not allowed to use or is only known to those with Maemo/Meego history? A quick response: we support the Qt API and rather than developing our own proprietary one we're working hard to support the open one as it grows. The Qt documentation is extensive and superb :) Using it in Sailfish Silica apps is less well documented but is improving (and honestly is mainly a tutorial issue for new developers - not an API docs issue). Yes there are some APIs in the mobile space that are not part of the Qt release yet - Qt 5.2 will introduce more. David ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list -- Luciano Montanaro Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams ___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list___ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
