[Qt-interest] Hello, regarding the QT mobile widgets

[Patric]

  Hello Kai,

thank you for the extremely helpful answers. I understood the general 
idea and the difference between QWidget uses and QML approach. I 
understand also that QML is not yet officially out.

But I'm a bit confused about the mobile side of the things and I'm sure 
I'm not the only one. See, I have QT experience but before all these 
changes. I didn't even knew there is QT reference page...

I'm confused about :
1. which approach to use for my current project since it's urgent 
(target Nokia devices, Symbian and Maemo)
2. what is the future of the mobile side of QT (from a technical point 
of view)

See, I understand that the current official way is to use the standard 
QT widgets which are not tailored for mobile devices but extends the 
native UI, we have the Qt animation framework to make things more 
beautiful, kinetic scrolling here and there... but in general not 
optimized. I'm talking for both Symbian and Maemo.

On the other hand we have Orbit (UI extensions for mobile development). 
Which are not officially supported yet. We have QML also.

So I would like to ask few questions to clarify the current and future 
idea situations.I'm sure it'll be helpful for other guys like me that 
are trying to comprehend the new aspects of QT.

1. Currently the official way of doing mobile development for Symbian 
and Maemo is through standard QT widgets.
2. Standard QT widgets inherit the UI style of the platform but are not 
optimized for mobile experience.
3. Qt Orbit (UI extensions for mobile development) is also not official 
widget set. Do they inherit the native UI ? Guess they are not supported 
be UI Designer either.
4. Are these mobile development extensions the future official QT mobile 
widgets ? Are they gonna be supported in QT Designer and are they gonna 
be common for Symbian and Maemo as official widgets for both platforms ?
5. Is QML currently suitable for mobile development as an alternative of 
standard widgets/orbit ?
6. Also I can't really find documentation or Orbit or some tutorial or 
even widget screen shots, apart of some small video on youtube.
7. I understand that your advice is to currently go with standard 
widgets, since Orbit still don't have good support neither do QML.
8. Are there other alternatives than standard widgets/orbit/qml for UI 
mobile design ?
9. I'll be happy to receive some general info about the future of QT 
mobile development... since I'm strongly interested in Nokia/QT and 
there is really a lot of misleading information on the net on this topic.

Best Regards,
Patric

On 26.8.2010 г. 10:20, Kai Koehne wrote:
> On 8/25/2010 11:13 PM, ext Patric wrote:
>>    Thank you for the answer.
>>
>> This all sounds very interesting.
>>
>> A lot of things have changed since I last used QT two years ago. I want
>> to create a mobile app to run on Maemo and Symbian. I'm a little bit
>> confused actually... so I would be happy if I get answers to some simple
>> questions.
> Hi Patric,
>
> let me add my 2 cents:
>
>> 1. I see there is a lot about QML around the reference. Is the "QML way"
>> going to replace the traditional UI Designer way of making UIs ? Is it
>> mature right now ?
> Yes, it's mature, and people are using it for production code. No, it
> won't replace QWidgets in the foreseeable future. Actually both
> technologies are complementary: QWidget is good for 'traditional' UIs
> with native OS look. Qml shines when it comes to slick, unique looking
> UIs with animations, transition effects and so on.
>
>> 2. Is the QML editor available now and in stable state ?
> The QML _text_ editor is mature, and available e.g. in QtCreator 2.0.1 .
> The QuickDesigner isn't ready yet: consider it a technical preview (but
> it's also included in 2.0.1 if you enable the plugin).
>
> Anyway QML is really designed to be programmed also in text, so even
> without the QuickDesigner it's IMO a joy to work with.
>
>> 3. I don't quite see the place of qt-orbit in this situation. As far as
>> I can see from the QML demo video it's very good looking.
>> 4. I read somewhere that it's good QML to be used for building mobile
>> application UIs. Is it possible right now and is it true ? Should I use
>> it for my mobile project or should I use the standard widgets ? Can I
>> connect these QML components to C++ code ?
> Yes, you can easily connect QML components to C++ code:
>
> http://doc.trolltech.com/4.7-snapshot/qtbinding.html
>
> Whether it's best to use QWidgets or QML really depends on the type of
> the application / how it should look like.
>
> Just check out the examples/demos that will ship with 4.7, both QWidget
> based an QML based ones. This should give you a fairly good
> understanding  what to use when.
>
> But consider that Qml is only available in Qt 4.7, and depending on your
> own schedule / target devices this might be a good argument to stay with
> QWidget or Orbit.
>
> Kai
>
>