Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On 24 Jan 2008, at 09:18, Brad Douglas wrote: On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 08:53 -0800, Curt, WE7U wrote: On Sat, 19 Jan 2008, Brad Douglas wrote: Like I said before, let's leave this up to Xastir developers to decide what works best for them. We've both made good points they can reflect upon, so let's leave it at that. If you want to discuss it further, we should probably take it off the list. The current thought is to split the monolithic program up into pieces, with a daemon handling the transmit timing, interfaces, decoding, and feeding of an SQL database. That sounds like an excellent approach. Although Xastir is not exclusively *NIX, the *NIX philosophy/conventions applies and without degradation of portability. It's good to play to it's strengths. A bunch of emails seems to have appeared together, Has anyone moved further than just some thoughts? When I looked at the xastir source to go about adding IPv6 support, i did find it challenging to understand what was going on. Pretty much 99.9% due to my dumbness. That said I was able to generate a patch that worked, but I didn't complete it due to the fact that it would have required some changes to xastir structures that I didn't want to mess with. So I left well enough alone. That said, if it was split into more manageable pieces, it would mean that other, less gifted individuals (much like myself) may be able to contribute. Though that may not be borne out in practice.. I don't really know how these things go. Regards John -- John Ronan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, +353-51-302938 Telecommunications Software & Systems Group, http://www.tssg.org ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 08:53 -0800, Curt, WE7U wrote: > On Sat, 19 Jan 2008, Brad Douglas wrote: > > > Like I said before, let's leave this up to Xastir developers to decide > > what works best for them. We've both made good points they can reflect > > upon, so let's leave it at that. If you want to discuss it further, we > > should probably take it off the list. > > The current thought is to split the monolithic program up into > pieces, with a daemon handling the transmit timing, interfaces, > decoding, and feeding of an SQL database. That sounds like an excellent approach. Although Xastir is not exclusively *NIX, the *NIX philosophy/conventions applies and without degradation of portability. It's good to play to it's strengths. > The GUI would be broken up into pieces by functionality, perhaps > something like this: > > Configuration > Messaging/Bulletins > Map > Objects/Items (perhaps goes with map?) > etc. I would separate objects from maps. They can share many of the same properties, but I reckon it would be more intuitive to separate them. YMMV. > Once that is done people could port the pieces to additional widget > sets more easily. Care would be taken when writing the first ones > to keep the GUI calls quarantined from the rest of the code to make > additional porting easier. Well said. Anyone who wants to implement a GUI with their favorite tools are free to do so. This is something we've done in GRASS with good success. We have several GUI options (Tcl/Tk, wxPython, Java, etc.). Do you have any thoughts on a default GUI (at least as a test bed)? > Anyway, those are my current thoughts. Other developers may have > different ideas on how to go about it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm also interested in what other developer's thoughts are if they can spare a few moments. BTW, how many regular contributing developers does Xastir have? I get the impression that it is just a handful at most. -- 73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Sat, 19 Jan 2008, Brad Douglas wrote: > Like I said before, let's leave this up to Xastir developers to decide > what works best for them. We've both made good points they can reflect > upon, so let's leave it at that. If you want to discuss it further, we > should probably take it off the list. The current thought is to split the monolithic program up into pieces, with a daemon handling the transmit timing, interfaces, decoding, and feeding of an SQL database. The GUI would be broken up into pieces by functionality, perhaps something like this: Configuration Messaging/Bulletins Map Objects/Items (perhaps goes with map?) etc. Once that is done people could port the pieces to additional widget sets more easily. Care would be taken when writing the first ones to keep the GUI calls quarantined from the rest of the code to make additional porting easier. Anyway, those are my current thoughts. Other developers may have different ideas on how to go about it. -- Curt, WE7U: XASTIR: "Lotto: A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown "Windows: Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U The world DOES revolve around me: I picked the coordinate system! ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 19:50 -0600, Jason KG4WSV wrote: > > > On Jan 19, 2008 7:00 PM, Brad Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Then you're doing it wrong. ;-) > > Hey, I'm never wrong. I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. Ditto. ;-) > OTOH, there were some issues in the > early development of the wx framework. Those issues are long > gone. > > Well, it hasn't been all that long - was during fall semester, so > since August or so. That's about the right timeframe for 2.6. 2.8 is much better, IMO. BTW (from http://www.wxpython.org/builddoc.php): OS X NOTE: Depending on your version of OS X and Python you may need to use "pythonw" on the command line to run wxPython applications. This version of the Python executable is part of the Python Framework and is allowed to interact with the display. You can also double click on a .py or a .pyw file from the finder (assuming that the PythonLauncher app is associated with these file extensions) and it will launch the Framework version of Python for you. For information about creating Applicaiton Bundles of your wxPython apps please see the wiki and the mail lists. SOLARIS NOTE: If you get unresolved symbol errors when importing wxPython and you are running on Solaris and building with gcc, then you may be able to work around the problem by uncommenting a bit of code in config.py and building again. Look for 'SunOS' in config.py and uncomment the block containing it. The problem is that Sun's ld does not automatically add libgcc to the link step. If you are having persistent errors, the wx team would like to hear about it. Another solution is to just use Linux on those platforms. =) > My test is ./configure;make;make install. IMO that either works, > tells me what it needs to work, or it's broken. > > > You didn't provide a > reasonable argument against the Qt issues I brought up, > > > That's because as far as I can tell, the possibility of Trolltech > changing their licensing in a way that prevents future use seems no > more likely than the wx tools falling out of favor and/or the > developers dropping it. Maybe those who are more familiar with Qt > could say. It's been done before...and they drove a lot of people away by doing so. wx is here to stay and is being actively and aggressively developed (so is Qt and it may be easier to rollup Qt into a package). Like I said before, let's leave this up to Xastir developers to decide what works best for them. We've both made good points they can reflect upon, so let's leave it at that. If you want to discuss it further, we should probably take it off the list. Back to our regularly scheduled Xastir discussions. -- 73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Jan 19, 2008 7:00 PM, Brad Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Then you're doing it wrong. ;-) > Hey, I'm never wrong. I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. > OTOH, there were some issues in the > early development of the wx framework. Those issues are long gone. Well, it hasn't been all that long - was during fall semester, so since August or so. My test is ./configure;make;make install. IMO that either works, tells me what it needs to work, or it's broken. > You didn't provide a > reasonable argument against the Qt issues I brought up, That's because as far as I can tell, the possibility of Trolltech changing their licensing in a way that prevents future use seems no more likely than the wx tools falling out of favor and/or the developers dropping it. Maybe those who are more familiar with Qt could say. It seems quite possible that even if the licensing did change back to commercial, we could set up a donation system to buy a copy or three of commercial Qt. If Steve can get money for findu.com hardware that way... -Jason kg4wsv ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 18:41 -0600, Jason KG4WSV wrote: > On Jan 19, 2008 4:36 PM, Brad Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I would highly recommend using a wxPython GUI approach. > > I tried wxSomethingorother and it wouldn't compile out of the tarball > on Solaris or Mac OS X as best I recall. I was totally unimpressed. Then you're doing it wrong. ;-) OTOH, there were some issues in the early development of the wx framework. Those issues are long gone. > IMO, among the goals should be increased portability and increased > performance. I think wxPython would be sub-optimal on both counts. I > have spoken to software engineers that use Qt, and they love it. We chose wxPython for GRASS specifically for it's portability. We have strict portability rules to maximize flexibility. You didn't provide a reasonable argument against the Qt issues I brought up, but there's no sense arguing it unless you're doing the GUI development for Xastir. > If any headway is to be made on establishing a windows install base, > it's gonna have to be easy to install. I didn't have any noticeable > trouble with Cygwin or VMware, but typical windows users are not > sophisticated enough to handle it. The wx framework runs well under Windows and installers are relatively trivial. > Whether or not making headway on a windows install base should be any > sort of priority I'll leave to others. I only use Windows for a particular DSP compiler so I can't speak to this (nor do I care ;-). -- 73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Jan 19, 2008 4:36 PM, Brad Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would highly recommend using a wxPython GUI approach. > I tried wxSomethingorother and it wouldn't compile out of the tarball on Solaris or Mac OS X as best I recall. I was totally unimpressed. IMO, among the goals should be increased portability and increased performance. I think wxPython would be sub-optimal on both counts. I have spoken to software engineers that use Qt, and they love it. If any headway is to be made on establishing a windows install base, it's gonna have to be easy to install. I didn't have any noticeable trouble with Cygwin or VMware, but typical windows users are not sophisticated enough to handle it. Whether or not making headway on a windows install base should be any sort of priority I'll leave to others. -Jason kg4wsv ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 11:44 -0600, Jason KG4WSV wrote: > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/19/0130250&from=rss > > I recall in the occasional xastir version 2 discussion, one of the issues is > cross-platform portability. Qt is a contender, but there were serious > concerns about the Qt license and how it fit with xastir's license. > > Now, it seems, Trolltech has switched to GPL v3 for Qt. How does that > change things? I have an aversion to Qt because of past licensing antics. There's nothing that says they won't go back to them in the future, locking developers into a particular version. I would highly recommend using a wxPython GUI approach. This also avoids the Qt/GTK flame wars. The final say, of course, is up to the developers to use what is easiest/most familiar to them. -- 73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
[Xastir] new Qt license and xastir v2
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/19/0130250&from=rss I recall in the occasional xastir version 2 discussion, one of the issues is cross-platform portability. Qt is a contender, but there were serious concerns about the Qt license and how it fit with xastir's license. Now, it seems, Trolltech has switched to GPL v3 for Qt. How does that change things? -Jason kg4wsv ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
