[haiku-development] Re: Haiku, Qt and apps, oh my!

  • From: Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:54:51 +0200

On 2009-03-29 at 09:00:33 [+0200], Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Matt Madia wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
> > wrote:
> >   
> > > Focus shift?
> >
> > I wouldn't call this a focus shift at all.
> 
> There is a clear contradiction between what Ingo asserted in his email 
> and some of the things that the project has been saying all along as a 
> way to differentiate itself from other open source OSes (mostly Linux).
> 
> If this is not a fundamental shift in Haiku's philosophy, then how do you 
> reconcile the assertion "that having at least one or two of the major 
> toolkits available on Haiku is simply a necessity" (quote from Ingo) with 
> what the project has been saying all along about Haiku being "developed 
> under a single unified vision for the whole OS", that "includes a 
> graphical user interface tightly tied to a unique graphics system" and 
> that does not rely on "toolkits such as GTK+ or Qt" (quotes from the 
> Haiku website FAQ)?

I can see two sides to this.

1) Thoughts about and attempts at porting Qt are nothing new. In fact, Ingo 
has been part of one of the porting efforts (to BeOS) years ago. I don't 
regard it any different than trying to port OpenJDK. That's exactly the 
same thing, because Java is not only another programming language, it's 
also a tool kit. It has the very same need about being properly integrated, 
or Java apps won't feel native at all. But noone said "No, please don't 
port Java!".
2) The desire to port a major tool kit (Qt in particular) and make it's API 
available as a first class citicen along side the Be API has grown stronger 
and stronger in me because a) it's beautifully designed and is just as nice 
or nicer as the Be API, and much, much more complete. And b) we need to 
catch up, or we will always remain in this "has great potential" state but 
in reality we will only grow a bigger gap to the other platforms over time.

Maybe once we have some room to breath (ie some of the major feature 
deficiencies knocked out), we can spend some time on thinking on how to 
innovate and take the "BeOS way" to the next level. But we will never even 
get there if we don't take some major shortcuts. And this shortcut in 
particular allows you to 1) target Haiku as well as the major other 
platforms with your own commercial application development and 2) bring 
many other nice, major apps to the platform.

Best regards,
-Stephan

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