[Development] Platform Content Selection

[Alan Alpert]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:30 PM, André Pönitz
<andre.poenitz at mathematik.tu-chemnitz.de> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 05:03:05PM -0800, Alan Alpert wrote:
>> With the new cross-platform focus, we need some way for QML to
>> load platform specific content at runtime. [...]
>> It's really Qt that's cross-platform focused now, not me. [...]
>
> These are interesting statements.
>
> Given that being cross-platform has been _the_ core promise of Qt
> since its inception (and yes, I conveniently ignore 2010 +/-1.5 year
> or so), this "new cross-platform focus" must be meant to relate to
> QML only.

Nope.
>
> Am I really supposed to read this as "when $someone invented QML,
> cross-platform was not a consideration, now there's suddenly a need
> to glue on a few cross-platform features"?

Nope.

What I meant by "new cross-platform" focus what just my personal
opinion, standard disclaimers apply ;) . I wasn't using the term
platform correctly here, I was really referring to the
cross-device-spectrum focus. The cross-platform focus that's been with
Qt from its inception has been deploying across different platforms
but the same device. I don't think we've really been interested in the
same platform, different device case. Which really shows how badly I
used the term "cross-platform".

So I'll try to replace "cross-platform" now with "cross-device".
Imagine that you have one package for the BB10 app world and it's
supposed to work on all the future devices. I can't remember the exact
details which have been publicly revealed yet, but it does include
all-touch vs keyboard and a couple of different resolutions. You need
some way to select the right content when you're installed on a
specific device (this could be run-time or package-time technically,
but I still prefer run-time). Android has the same problem, I have a
lot of apps on my Nexus 7 which either literally or metaphorically do
not work on that device. There are also apps that just have an ugly
black border thanks to the auto-compatibility layer. As a convenience
GUI toolkit, I think Qt should have some way to help application
developers with this problem. I'm just focused on QML because I'm
always focused on QML :) .

>> I just want this so that SameGame runs beautifully on BB10 :) .
>> So while I'd welcome feedback from any source, I *need* to hear
>> it from people interested in other platforms (or even just
>> cross-platform development!).
>
> Is the question whether Qt should _also_ allow to develop single-
> platform toy applications, or whether Qt should be shoehorned
> into something that _only_ allows development single-platform toy
> applications?
>

I'm not talking about a single-platform toy application - if I wanted
to make SameGame run beautifully *only* on BB10 that's really easy.
I'm talking about multi-platform toy applications, preferably in a way
that real applications could use too (and obviously not in a way that
hampers real applications, no matter how many platforms they run on).

--
Alan Alpert