[Development] Perceptions/Understandings of the QML language [was: Question about Qt's future]

[Simon Hausmann]

On Tuesday 29. April 2014 07.17.14 Koehne Kai wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: development-bounces+kai.koehne=digia.com at qt-project.org
> > [mailto:development-bounces+kai.koehne=digia.com at qt-project.org] On
> > Behalf Of Andre Ponitz
> > Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 11:34 PM
> > To: Alan Alpert
> > Cc: development at qt-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [Development] Perceptions/Understandings of the QML language
> > [was: Question about Qt's future]
> > 
> > On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:12:47AM -0700, Alan Alpert wrote:
> > > Yes, I agree that more rigorous and agreed definitions would be
> > > helpful. It also takes time, and impedes innovation, so I'm not sure
> > > if we're quite mature enough to "nail down" QML just yet. Should be
> > > soon though, in the next few years.
> > 
> > To get this straight: After five years of development the "Maintainer" of
> > the Qt Declarative module is neither able nor willing to give a simple
> > definition of what "QML" is.
> 
> Come on Andre, ad hominem attacks do not help. I'd expect better from you as
> a "Maintainer" yourself (quotes added on purpose).

I agree.

For example I decide to invest time into doing something in Qt if for example 
I had an idea myself and I'm excited about it.

If somebody else wants me to fix a bug, then my motivation for sitting down and 
spending a day or two digging deep into the code base to fix that bug is pride 
and to some extend guilt: I want our users to enjoy using Qt and if I succeed 
in relating to the feeling of that user (based on a high quality bug report 
for example), then I'm compelled to fix it.

If somebody else wants me to do something bigger that just a bug fix, then they 
need to inspire me. If they don't want to do all the work on their own, then 
they need to create excitement around their idea - they need to lead. In the 
Qt project - and many other open source projects naturally - the ability to 
inspire others is crucial in order to move things forward.

Unfortunately a substantial amount of emails in this particular email thread 
do not exactly inspire me. Hence I'm less inclined to contribute.

My suggestion is: If you'd like to change Qt in big ways, prepare yourself and 
your idea, come to the contributor summit, invite people to a discussion and 
create a movement. Excitement and inspiration is much better to get across in 
person, when you can see their face, their hands, their gestures and their 
smile.
 
> On to the topic: QML is what the QML parser accepts (that is, JSON like
> declarative syntax + JavaScript in certain places). No, there's no standard
> document for it (in case that's what you're after), but it has a
> well-defined grammar etc. Christian Kamm AFAIR planned a long time ago to
> add the grammar to the documentation, but I think that never was finished.
> 
> And, as always, the documentation can be improved ;)
> 
> The discussion so far was whether it makes sense to give the 'declarative'
> part alone a separate name (something we haven't done so far). I personally
> agree with Alan that it doesn't make much sense as long as the two parts
> are technically and practically inseparable. But I'm personally all for an
> experiment to come up with a more strict, declarative QML subset.

I also like the idea of such an experiment. The fact we parse QML only once 
and have full control over the JS code generation should make it much easier 
nowadays to achieve this while preserving semantics at the same time.

(Kai's approach is an example of something that inspires me :)

Simon