[Qt-interest] Qt for the iPad?

[Andrew Hodgkinson]

On 05/04/2010 22:19, Richard S. Wright Jr. wrote:

> [...] keep a very good separation
> between application logic, and the user interface. Personally, I
> really don't want my iPhone/iPad app to look like an OS X app or an
> Android App, or a Windows CE app, and I don't even think the user
> should "use" them the same [...] Okay, before I get flamed.

On the contrary... I think people who are reasonably or deeply familiar 
with Mac OS X are more acutely aware than most of the issues with 
cross-platform "one size fits all" GUIs. Cross-platform application 
"business logic" can be really useful, but truly successful cross 
platform GUIs are rare. On Windows and Linux, you can kind of get away 
with it because inconsistency is rife and there are few 'unusual' GUI 
features/standards present. On Mac OS, less so. There are issues of 
proper integration with the services menu, AppleScript support if your 
application warrants it and numerous GUI features which have no direct 
analogue in Windows or Linux, such as slide-out drawers, HUDs, icon 
badges, document proxy icons in title bars and many more.

On the iPad, it's likely that the most interesting and successful 
applications will make specific use of device features within the target 
market - its mobility, e-reader like form factor, location awareness, 
that kind of thing. You may well find your application translates poorly 
or not at all to the Desktop; it really only works on a tablet-like 
device, not even doing well on a small mobile phone. So again, we end up 
with the interesting idea of the back-end logic being cross-platform, but 
less interest in the GUI components being cross platform too. As far as 
I'm concerned, an iPad's resources are far too constrained to have to put 
up with a huge chunk of Qt code desperately attempting to mimic the look 
and feel of the native Cocoa GUI components which are already there.

So - an intelligent effort to spot the valuable bits of Qt to port across 
multiple tablet targets: Great idea. Porting the whole lot to iPad and 
trying to make the GUI look and feel native? Ugh :-)

-- 
Andrew Hodgkinson, Endurance Technology
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