rationale for ASU (and change from GTK to Qt)

[Wolfgang Spraul]

Ron -
I think a lot of people hate QT so much that they don't even see  
anymore that GTK+ still lives and grows as before!

Yes, we brought Qt/Qtopia into Openmoko, on top of X so it can co- 
exist with GTK+ and EFL.
There never has been a 'GTK+ stack'. What is a 'GTK+ stack'?

Hopefully the GTK+ telephony applications can be connected to Mickey's  
new framework, as roh suggested yesterday.
Hopefully all the work raster does will lead to great new EFL-based  
applications. Edje looks very interesting.
Qtopia provides everybody with another option to do telephony. Some  
people may dislike it, well they can ignore it and continue with GTK+  
instead.

OpenEmbedded is what holds Openmoko together, and there will always be  
lots of images.
If anybody expects Openmoko to force a certain API upon its users, you  
are wrong! WinMobile may be forcing some APIs as 'default' APIs upon  
you, so does Symbian, iPhone, etc.
Openmoko won't.
GTK+ is not Openmoko's official/default graphical toolkit, never was  
and never will be. Openmoko's mission is not to teach the world how  
great GTK+ is. If GTK+ is good, great GTK+ applications will emerge,  
and usage of GTK+ will grow. This can be driven by YOU as much as by  
the few full-time Openmoko employees. Please help us improving our GTK 
+ applications today!

Right now there is a lot of momentum behind EFL/Edje at Openmoko, some  
of the new applications we are developing (Assassin, Exposure,  
Splinter) are based on that.
If you think we are "switching to QT" - why are we then developing our  
new applications using EFL?
Hope this provides some background information.

Answering your questions:
> Can someone explain the rationale for the decision
> to switch from the original GTK based OpenMoko
> to QT based version known as April Software Update (ASU)?
No switch.
QTopia looked interesting because it gives us a fully functioning set  
of telephony applications, Trolltech GPL'ed it, and we didn't like the  
fact that the only way to get access to it was via the framebuffer- 
based builds Trolltech was distributing. We wanted to have QTopia  
functionality on top of X, so it could co-exist with GTK+ and EFL,  
i.e. so that GTK+ applications (tangoGPS and others) would _NOT_ be  
pushed aside by Qtopia.
Our main direction is not QT, it's EFL.

> As an observer, it's my impression that ASU
> represents a significant architectural change
> that somehow, Wham! Bang! "just happened."
Wrong. Qtopia on framebuffer, pushing all GTK+ work aside, would have  
been a major architectural change.
Our change is very minor, we just port Qtopia on top of X so it  
becomes another option. Actually replacing matchbox with the  
Enlightenment window manager was a bigger architectural change, ask  
raster about that.
I do admit that we have underestimated the degree of antipathy against  
Qtopia that led people to stop listening as soon as they heard the  
word 'Qtopia' or 'Trolltech'.
:-)

Best Regards,
Wolfgang

On Jun 27, 2008, at 8:01 PM, Ron K. Jeffries wrote:

>
> Can someone explain the rationale for the decision
> to switch from the original GTK based OpenMoko
> to QT based version known as April Software Update (ASU)?
>
> As an observer, it's my impression that ASU
> represents a significant architectural change
> that somehow, Wham! Bang! "just happened."
>
> Transparency is a virtue. <g>
>
> Ron K. Jeffries
> http://www.retaggr.com/Card/rjeffries
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

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