Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Hi, In _my opinion_ QT is even more powerful than GTK+ but who matters, I think this power is not needed on such devices at all and think both toolkits are not really suited for embedded use (so I would not prefer a QT based 770). I think the whole point of Maemo is Desktop in a pocket. What would be the point of having something less compatible / open / widely used in Maemo? Nokia already has Symbian which is more embedded[1] than Linux will ever be. [1] Embedded: proprietary, non-standard etc... :-) If I look at the tons of Hildon/GTK based program's I've installed on my 770 I see _none_ of them using any advanced features of GTK - just basic ui like buttons, tables and lists (uhh, slow scrolling) and some images here and there. Exactly the same could be archived with one ofthose ultra-slim high-performance toolkits available with about 1/10of size/footprint and 2x the performance. Have you really looked at Gtk TreeView and related stuff? It has a lot of features (singlemultiple selection, cell renderers, async updates, tree and list view, columns optional headers, drag drop, stylus and keyboard interaction etc), and *all* of them are used/required in N770 apps. TreeView/Model have more code than some complete widget sets I've known... Same goes for TextView too. - Eero ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Have you really looked at Gtk TreeView and related stuff? It has a lot of features (singlemultiple selection, cell renderers, async updates, tree and list view, columns optional headers, drag drop, stylus and keyboard interaction etc), and *all* of them are used/required in N770 apps. TreeView/Model have more code than some complete widget sets I've known... Yep I know GtkTreeView and the whole custom table renderes etc however the same could be archived with much less, these features are default today and I never (except once) used a toolkit which did not support that features. Even a small java-based toolkit (250kb) which I use in a project now supports this (its even more flexible than GTK with an flexibel model-view-controller design which allows as much abstraction as you need withought blaoting the code too much for small wisgets). However I don't want to flame nore do I want to say I think GTK was a really bad choice, but it also has its drawbacks. I am looking foreward when Maemo will migrate to 2.8 and the whole cairo overhead will be there (since cairo has an FP api and Maemo doesn't use anything which canno't be done accerlated which is now done in software). Same goes for TextView too. Right, thats why I installed the xterminal on my 770 of course. But that would make a difference for the user, using fox (or whatever) won't - the user would only notice that scolling / redrawing is faster ;-) However thats just my personal opinion and its even only an opinion, nothing to take serious. So please no flame ;) lg Clemens ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, Clemens Eisserer wrote: Same goes for TextView too. Right, thats why I installed the xterminal on my 770 of course. But that would make a difference for the user, using fox (or whatever) won't - the user would only notice that scolling / redrawing is faster ;-) Remove/rename your gtkrc on the device and see how fast it would be with gtk+. Eye candy's performance cost is somewhat constant no matter what toolkit you use... So you take arbitary fast toolkit, implement nice theme and voila it's almost as slow as the current implementation ;) -- Valtteri Rahkonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rahkonen.org +358 40 5077041 ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
2005/11/9, Clemens Eisserer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I am looking foreward when Maemo will migrate to 2.8 and the whole cairo overhead will be there (since cairo has an FP api and Maemo doesn't use anything which canno't be done accerlated which is now done in software). It probably won't unless magic happens with Cairo. I've run some tests and it's out-of-the-question without any special tricks at least. Although my tests didn't exclusively prove that it's the FP api that kills it (it crawled in an area that should not have anything to do with FP AFAIK). I don't think it's feasible for Maemo to start requiring a FPU either, the non-FPU ARMs are too popular in embedded systems. OTOH, nothing prevents replacing the Gtk+ for systems that have an FPU (barring incompatible patches, but those are being migrated where possible). Same goes for TextView too. Right, thats why I installed the xterminal on my 770 of course. But that would make a difference for the user, using fox (or whatever) won't - the user would only notice that scolling / redrawing is faster ;-) User would notice that Fox looks butt-ugly :) It's easy to say or whatever, but you'd really need to prove the or whatever to be worth it. Gtk+ seems to do well enough on the machine, without major drawbacks (if there were, it wouldn't be used, right?). It's not like Gtk+ was chosen on a whim (I hope ;). -- Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Powered by http://movial.fi ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [Opie-devel] Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Why are you trying this? I would recommend porting the whole OPIE to the N770. That would be an alternative to Maemo. I personally feel a little bit home using Qt. Using both Maemo Qt would be a waste of resources. Users care about applications, not about environments. Porting the complete Opie environment to the N770 would just add up to the fragmentation. Writing a Qt Hildon compatibility layer would make [some] Opie applications run next to the other Hildon applications while retaining their look and feel. But Maemo is still a new, incompatible system (ok there's some compatibility with gtk+) and writing a compatibility layer for Qt makes the situation even worse. Better use OPIE. And if OPIE is the better system, a lot of people will install it on their N770 and use it - if not, stay with Maemo and write the software for it. There's hardly a comparison. Maemo has a much better Linux technology integration and a much better look and feel. Opie has some great applications, but the complete environment lacks many things to come even near to being an alternative to a Maemo standard installation. -- Regards, Mickey. -- Dipl.-Inf. Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
[maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Hi Pals, Nokia, I would be intersted in leading the development of a LGPL/BSD licensed porting layer of the Qtopia platform for the maemo platform. Why such a layer is good: -Existing applications can be utilized for Maemo by easily migrating them to use osso/hildon technology -More applications will make hildon/osso more attractive -Give developers the choiche to target any platform easily -Maemo is a great piece of Free Software and should be supported How such a port would look like: -We would use Qt2/X11 and make it look like the maemo gui -We would implement libqpe,libqtopia, libqtopia1, libqtopiapim using osso, hildon and Qt2 -In the future we should use Qt4 but that would require more porting of the applications. What we need: -Legal counseling if we can do a clean room implementations and how it should look like. -Sponsors: -People Donating Time to this project -People/Companies Donating Money to this project allowing people to work on it during office hours (not for myself though) -People writing tests and setting up a QA infrastructure -People Testing our Work -People porting/verifying application work -People enjoying using maemo How should we proceed: -We should gather enough people to start this project -We should have enough information to start the clean room implementation. -We should quantify which classes are mostly needed to port most of the apps. if you are interested please email me regards holger ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
ext Holger Freyther wrote: Hi Pals, Nokia, As only my personal viewbased on my prtsonal project I would be intersted in leading the development of a LGPL/BSD licensed porting layer of the Qtopia platform for the maemo platform. Why such a layer is good: -Existing applications can be utilized for Maemo by easily migrating them to use osso/hildon technology -More applications will make hildon/osso more attractive -Give developers the choiche to target any platform easily -Maemo is a great piece of Free Software and should be supported How such a port would look like: -We would use Qt2/X11 and make it look like the maemo gui -We would implement libqpe,libqtopia, libqtopia1, libqtopiapim using osso, hildon and Qt2 -In the future we should use Qt4 but that would require more porting of the applications. I did a minimum porting layer to get qtopia application ( cumulus / www.kflog.org ) to running. I did it based on qt3.3. I get it so far that i get application running in real 770. The most important things missing was support for maemo desktop and input methods. I also did't even try to make it yet as a stand alone layer. I even did not try any clean room but just use modifies qutopia libraries and so resulting stuff will still be GPL (least i think, i am not sppecialist in legal stuff ) Kate What we need: -Legal counseling if we can do a clean room implementations and how it should look like. -Sponsors: -People Donating Time to this project -People/Companies Donating Money to this project allowing people to work on it during office hours (not for myself though) -People writing tests and setting up a QA infrastructure -People Testing our Work -People porting/verifying application work -People enjoying using maemo How should we proceed: -We should gather enough people to start this project -We should have enough information to start the clean room implementation. -We should quantify which classes are mostly needed to port most of the apps. if you are interested please email me regards holger ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Hi, I would be intersted in leading the development of a LGPL/BSD licensed porting layer of the Qtopia platform for the maemo platform. Sounds intresting. Do you mean something like this: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/gtk-webcore/NRCore/kwiq/KWQButton.cpp?rev=1.1.1.1view=auto It seems that gtk-webcore implements partial QT - GTK+ adaption layer. Br, Sampo ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
On 11/7/05, Holger Freyther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Pals, Nokia, Hi Holger, I'm interested in have Qt/Qtopia/Opie to run on Nokia-770, however I have some points: - If you will spend resources, do it first to port Opie to Qt4, everyone will enjoy it and it will make things faster easier. Porting current code base is a loosing time :-(. Right now, Qtopia doesn't work well with X11 display, wich is bad. Qt4 seems to address this better. - If you want a Qt based GUI, it'll not be maemo's GUI and trying to run the Maemo-WM will just take resources. So you'll probably remove maemo-gui, leaving just maemo core... which is basically linux, so in the end you have something which is _NOT_ maemo compatible anymore. You'll have to use other input method, etc. I like options and I like Qt programming more than Gtk, and think that Qt has more embedded code base and mature software, that's why I'm interested in this port, however it's splitting resources, which are low right now :-( -- Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri -- Computer Engineer 2001 - UNICAMP Mobile: +55 (19) 9165 8010 Phone: +1 (347) 624 6296 @ sip.stanaphone.com Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ#: 17249123 MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 0xB640E1A2 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
...which makes these sound a bit funky. If you use *anything* GUI-related that is already implemented, you'll drag Gtk+ in. Which will mean that you need to have both Qt and Gtk+ libraries in memory at the same time, which I think is not too hot on the current hardware. From this point of view I think GTK2 was the completly wrong choice as Maemo's GUI toolkit. Its slow (mameo contains even a hacked version which tries to speed it up a bit) and heavyweight (megs of code splitted in many different shared-libs), but it was choosen for compatibility as the whole Xserver based approach. (fox-toolkit or fltk are much more efficient) I think with this decision in mind a port of QT would not be that bad either since it would allow running apps on your Maemo powered device which would not be able to run otherwise or would not look that good. lg Clemens ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Hi Holger, If you are going to base this on Qt2 how could it be LGPL/BSD licensed? If you are do to a LGPL/BSD licensed version of Qtopia you need to do it from scratch not using TrollTech's code at all. Also if the goal is to make it a porting layer you should in other words try to implement the Qt API as a binding for GTK+. I know where where a couple of small attempts at doing that starting with the old Harmony codebase (after the main Harmony project had derailed), but none ever went anywhere. Christian On Mon, 2005-11-07 at 22:17 +0100, Holger Freyther wrote: Hi Pals, Nokia, I would be intersted in leading the development of a LGPL/BSD licensed porting layer of the Qtopia platform for the maemo platform. Why such a layer is good: -Existing applications can be utilized for Maemo by easily migrating them to use osso/hildon technology -More applications will make hildon/osso more attractive -Give developers the choiche to target any platform easily -Maemo is a great piece of Free Software and should be supported How such a port would look like: -We would use Qt2/X11 and make it look like the maemo gui -We would implement libqpe,libqtopia, libqtopia1, libqtopiapim using osso, hildon and Qt2 -In the future we should use Qt4 but that would require more porting of the applications. What we need: -Legal counseling if we can do a clean room implementations and how it should look like. -Sponsors: -People Donating Time to this project -People/Companies Donating Money to this project allowing people to work on it during office hours (not for myself though) -People writing tests and setting up a QA infrastructure -People Testing our Work -People porting/verifying application work -People enjoying using maemo How should we proceed: -We should gather enough people to start this project -We should have enough information to start the clean room implementation. -We should quantify which classes are mostly needed to port most of the apps. if you are interested please email me regards holger ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers -- Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller Business Development Manager Fluendo S.L. Mobile Phone: +34 678093464 Office Phone: +34 933175153 Fax : +34 934127034 ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Hello, Clemens Eisserer wrote: From this point of view I think GTK2 was the completly wrong choice as Maemo's GUI toolkit. Its slow (mameo contains even a hacked version which tries to speed it up a bit) and heavyweight (megs of code splitted in many different shared-libs), but it was choosen for compatibility as the whole Xserver based approach. (fox-toolkit or fltk are much more efficient) I really don't share this opinion. Compared to fltk and fox GTK is much more powerful and comes with a complete system abstraction layer and - if someone doesn't like C - almost independent from the language used. The performance of the latest maemo software is pretty good having the large display and the slow CPU in mind, i can remember other devices with faster CPUs behave much worse. If you are interested in trying plain GTK in a more comparable environment you might want to try a GPE image you can easily create using OpenEmbedded. There are other reasons to port Qt, but not this one. I think with this decision in mind a port of QT would not be that bad either since it would allow running apps on your Maemo powered device which would not be able to run otherwise or would not look that good. So the argument is to add another huge toolkit because GTK is too big? I can remember someone else explained that situation before... on the other hand you can take the device and run your own Qt based filesystem on it. But then you won't need to port the tookit but port your applications to work with the 770 hardware capabilities. Greetings Florian -- The dream of yesterday Florian Boor is the hope of todayTel: 0271-771091-14 and the reality of tomorrow.Fax: 0271-771091-19 [Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904][EMAIL PROTECTED] 6C 44 30 4C 43 20 6B 61 16 07 0F AA E6 97 70 A8 ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
So the argument is to add another huge toolkit because GTK is too big? I can remember someone else explained that situation before... on the other hand you can take the device and run your own Qt based filesystem on it. But then you won't need to port the tookit but port your applications to work with the 770 hardware capabilities. No, the argument is not to blame QT for beeing huge and also using using another bloated toolkit as basis. The real argument for QT would be to allow applications to run on the 770 which wouldn't work otherwise - nobody talks about including it into the default distribution but if you need program x/y I think you'll happily install QT if it allows to do what you want. Maybe linking it statically isn't a bad idea if its just used by one single program Compared to fltk and fox GTK is much more powerful and comes with a complete system abstraction layer and - if someone doesn't like C - almost independent from the language used. Well I could say the same about QT + it has an almost complete class library so I don't need any time wasting with unix broken apis ;) In _my opinion_ QT is even more powerful than GTK+ but who matters, I think this power is not needed on such devices at all and think both toolkits are not really suited for embedded use (so I would not prefer a QT based 770). If I look at the tons of Hildon/GTK based program's I've installed on my 770 I see _none_ of them using any advanced features of GTK - just basic ui like buttons, tables and lists (uhh, slow scrolling) and some images here and there. Exactly the same could be archived with one of those ultra-slim high-performance toolkits available with about 1/10 of size/footprint and 2x the performance. However, peace ;-) lg Clemens ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Hi, Maybe linking it statically isn't a bad idea if its just used by one single program Yep, but linking QT statically would make the binary probably too big to fit nicely in the N770 flash... It's doable anyway for the ones who really want it (not me ;-) If I look at the tons of Hildon/GTK based program's I've installed on my 770 I see _none_ of them using any advanced features of GTK - just basic ui like buttons, tables and lists (uhh, slow scrolling) and some images here and there. Exactly the same could be archived with one of those ultra-slim high-performance toolkits available with about 1/10 of size/footprint and 2x the performance. Well there is more than just advanced widgets in GTK+ which is not available in all lighter toolkits (full i18n, anti-aliased fonts, glib, rich theming etc.) However, peace ;-) Agreed, let's keep the discussion technical and be open to all opinions! - Kaitsu - ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
Am 7 Nov 2005 um 22:17 hat Holger Freyther geschrieben: How such a port would look like: -We would use Qt2/X11 and make it look like the maemo gui -We would implement libqpe,libqtopia, libqtopia1, libqtopiapim using osso, hildon and Qt2 -In the future we should use Qt4 but that would require more porting of the applications. Why are you trying this? I would recommend porting the whole OPIE to the N770. That would be an alternative to Maemo. I personally feel a little bit home using Qt. Using both Maemo Qt would be a waste of resources. Do you remember the harmony project? Some tried to reimplement Qt 1.x - they never got far. Ok, there where some political problems as well. The OPIE folks seek for volunteers to help them. It would be better to support the OPIE project and provide a clean N770 port rather to implement the same GUI again and again. There are far too many GUIs available for Linux - maybe that's one of the problems Linux has. And far too many GUIs which aren't further developed. We should really stay with gtk+ here, or use OPIE to get Qt programs running. May the better system win :-) _OFF_TOPIC_ON_ An other solution would be to port the couple of programs which are missing on Maemo e.g. KO/Pi (http://www.pi-sync.net/html/ko_pi.html) to Maemo. Of course, that would be a lot of work but maybe less work than a clean room implementation of qt. Qt has other problems: Trolltech made each major release of qt incompatible to its predecessor. This is IMHO a major design fault. A lot of companies which use Qt still use the qt2 release. _ANGRY_MODE_ON_ My programs for Qtopia don't run on OPIE! That sucks! Linux has too may incompatibilities created - Libc5 to glibc, gcc1 to gcc2 to gcc 2.95 to gcc3. Are the gcc4 libs compatible with gcc3? I don't know... BUT I can still run a lot of programs, original written for Win95 on my WinXP box. Try this with linux software written in the years 95-97. No chance to get bin programs to run! And even to compile them is a little bit hard. _ANGRY_MODE_OFF_ Don't get me wrong: I like to have the possiblities with my Linux system. And I also like that the N770 device runs with Linux. But Maemo is still a new, incompatible system (ok there's some compatibility with gtk+) and writing a compatibility layer for Qt makes the situation even worse. Better use OPIE. And if OPIE is the better system, a lot of people will install it on their N770 and use it - if not, stay with Maemo and write the software for it. Keep it small and simple, and may be, a little bit faster that it is now... :-) _OFF_TOPIC_OFF_ Just my two cents, -Klaus -- Klaus Rotter * klaus at rotters dot de * www.rotters.de ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
I've been watching this thread with interest, and I have some feedback for you. Qtopia is about a 3mb footprint, it is pretty small, has its own framebuffer and doesn't rely on X, this is for Qt2x. Qt3 was never made in to an embedded version because of its size. I'm told that Qt4x was modularized better so it could be used for embedded again, I don't think anyone is doing it yet. OPIE is a problem from a licensing and compatibility point of view. OPIE is a fork of the GPL version of Qtopia and as time has gone on it has become less compatible. The other issue is the license, you cannot bundle a non-GPL app with OPIE and it is technically a GPL violation to use a non-GPL app with it because the application is now using the GPL versions of the libraries. The other problem for a commercial software company is that you can't rely on the fact that it is going to be available unless of course you have found some way to static link everything together, it would be like running a Qt app under GNOME basically. I have a huge investment in Qtopia development, nothing I'd like better than to be able to just run them on the device without having to rewrite the UI, but short of Nokia changing their mind and licensing Qtopia, any effort is just going to remain in the realm of the hobbyist IMO. At 11:11 AM 11/8/2005, you wrote: 2005/11/8, Clemens Eisserer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: ...which makes these sound a bit funky. If you use *anything* GUI-related that is already implemented, you'll drag Gtk+ in. Which will mean that you need to have both Qt and Gtk+ libraries in memory at the same time, which I think is not too hot on the current hardware. From this point of view I think GTK2 was the completly wrong choice as Maemo's GUI toolkit. Its slow (mameo contains even a hacked version which tries to speed it up a bit) and heavyweight (megs of code splitted in many different shared-libs), but it was choosen for compatibility as the whole Xserver based approach. (fox-toolkit or fltk are much more efficient) If Maemo would get a hacker every time somebody said that... I assume Qt has not got megs of code then? The Qt site boasts that: The Qt Class Library is a growing library of over 400 C++ classes [..] That doesn't sound lightweight to me ;) Gtk+ is, in my opinion, fast enough for the 770, the bulk of the performance issues come from the limited memory from which the (AFAIK non-gtk) system services occupy a fair share and from the fact that there is virtually no acceleration for the graphics. I think with this decision in mind a port of QT would not be that bad either since it would allow running apps on your Maemo powered device which would not be able to run otherwise or would not look that good. I'm all for a Qt version, diversity is good. It's having both of them in memory at the same time that is bad. Which also means that running programs for both at the same time would be bad too. And as said, most of stuff already done is in Gtk+, so you'd effectively have to write the GUI bits from scratch. But hey, in case you haven't noticed, Maemo is free software ;) -- Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Powered by http://movial.fi ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers Regards, Shawn Gordon President theKompany.com www.thekompany.com www.mindawn.com 949-713-3276 ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RFC: Qtopia Nokia N770 (maemo) porting layer
On 8. Nov 2005, at 22:28 Uhr, Kalle Vahlman wrote: So is there more candidates for this than Qt?-) Well, Cocoa/GNUstep of course! Na, just kidding ;-) Greets, Helge -- http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/helge/ OpenGroupware.org ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
