[Qt-jambi-interest] Some questions about Qt Jambi

[Tom Schindl]

Am 30.12.09 23:48, schrieb Bruno Wouters:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> Thanks for the fast response!
> 
> Which UI framework do you think has the most secure future in terms of
> compatibility with new operating systems and fixing bugs? While searching
> the net I found that there were a lot of people saying that Swing isn't
> updated for about 10 years or so. Is this true?

IMHO this is far from true. Though the API didn't changed a lot in the
last 10 years under the cover many things have been modified and
improved. So Swing isn't as bad as it used to be but a thing I "hate"
with it is that I have to buy in to SUNs idea of MVC - compared to plain
widget toolkits like QtJambi and SWT.

> 
> I think it will be a choice between SWT or Qt Jambi... Not sure which one to
> pick...

If I'd have to write a commerical application my choice would be between
SWT and Swing. An interesting addon of both Toolkits is that they
provide highlevel platforms/frameworks like the Netbeans-Platform and
Eclipse-Platform to write enterprise ready applications.

An interesting move in Eclipse/SWT is e4 which will provide a new
application platform build around:
* DI and Services
* Declarative UI
* Customizable through Declarative Styling
* ...

See the e4 white paper for informations on it [1]. An interesting fact
of e4 is that it's core is widget-toolkit agnostic and so can be used by
an UI developer (Qt-Jambi, Swing, SWT, ...) [2 see my e4 presentation].

> 
> The UFaceKit you pointed out also looks interesting but then I still need to
> choose a UI framework to start with :-). Will UFaceKit work with things like
> charts? Or more advanced stuff like drag & drop?
> 

UFaceKits main target are Form-based UIs so charts, ... are out-of-scope
(though UFaceKit makes it easy to mix "native" ui components like e.g.
JFreeChart) and Drag&Drop is not on my list of planned items for 1.0 but
certainly afterwards.

UFaceKit does exactly what José mentionned it keeps your code free from
UI-Toolkit-Dependencies and gives you highlevel functionality like MVP,
Declarative Styling, Resource-Management, ... .

> Kind regards,
> Bruno Wouters
> 

To me Eclipse with it's current RCP-Infrastructure (OSGi-based which is
the defacto standard in Java) and it's upcoming e4-release 1.0 in 2010
is the best choice for writing enterprise ready applications (naturally
I'm biased because I'm part of the dev team).

Tom

[1]http://www.eclipse.org/e4/resources/e4-whitepaper.php
[2]http://tomsondev.bestsolution.at/2009/10/30/ese-09-my-slides/