[Interest] qt vs web-runtime

[Stephen Bryant]

Hi,

> in the company there's Qt Vs phonegap (and other web-runtime).
> I'm obviously biased. What are the objective points in favor of Qt? I can
> not say anything about the Windows and Android we are not yet stable.

The native binary that you compile when using Qt will give much better 
performance than the VM - especially with Android 2.1 and earlier.  Given that 
the web view will also be natively compiled for the user's hardware, the 
performance differences may be a non-issue.  It depends a lot on what your app 
does.

However, you must expect binary compatibility problems in the future.  Intel 
is looking to grab a share of the market, and remember also that MIPS got 
themselves Android certified before Intel did.  There may also be edge cases 
of incompatibility between the various vendors' ARM-based solutions.

You'd have a significantly increased amount of testing to do, across the 
various hardware types.  A HTML/JS based solution sidesteps that problem.

An Android user is unlikely to know details about which CPU they have, and I 
have not yet seen a clean solution for making a single apk which supports 
multiple architectures...  but I haven't been looking very hard either!

Perhaps somebody else on this list has looked into it.

How much control do you have over your target platform?
Personally, I would not recommend Qt for creating Android apps for the general 
public, purely because of the testing and deployment issues.  This is not the 
case for iOS; don't know about WinPhone hardware.

If you are looking to target Android, WinPhone and iOS with a cross-platform 
app, and if the app's functionality is possible with HTML/JS, I would suggest 
looking at PhoneGap with jQuery Mobile.

I should also mention that there is a port of PhoneGap to the 'Qt platform' 
called 'callback-qt'.  It's a little lacking in plugins, but it does work.  
This means you can have your PhoneGap app run on Windows, Linux etc - which 
may help development.


> I do not like losing...

If you let your personal preference trump your objectivity, I would say you 
had already lost!  What is the best solution for the person who has to use the 
software you produce?

Steve
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