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

  • From: Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:39:25 +0200

On 2009-03-29 at 11:21:40 [+0200], François Revol <revol@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > There is a difference between having a Qt port available at 
> > Bebits/Haikuware and having it integrated inside the default image.
> 
> Also, it could help getting new contributors and native apps by making it 
> simpler to port the core part first, then write a native GUI...

Why would you bother if the Qt GUI works just as good as the "native" GUI 
would? Even better, the Qt GUI is maintained by other people and has 
already been tested much more. This is some effect I would see with VLC. At 
one point, I regarded the BeOS GUI for VLC the most comfortable on any 
platform. That was during the 0.4.3-0.4.6 times. After that, I had no time 
to maintain it, VLC being the beast to compile that it is. By now, VLC has 
switched over to Qt and the GUI is much better. Instead of updating and 
maintaining the BeOS GUI, I'd probably spend the time to fix the few 
remaining annoyances I may have with the Qt GUI and be done with it.

> > The other problem is similar to the wine effect on linux. There, having 
> > wine means most window apps will run, so big software companies
> > don't bother porting them to linux properly. Having Qt in Haiku could
> 
> Yes, same problem with ndiswrapper-like things, which gives reasons to 
> vendor not to release specs because "it works with the windows binaries" 
> (except they forget that this is only for x86).

It's just a matter of limited resources. It's just how the market works, 
you can't have it another way, or even blame it for being the way it is.

> > lead to a similar situation. It's meant to be temporary, because we 
> > don't have enough native apps, but it will last more than you think 
> > because people will just start to use it.
> 
> Just about proper communication.

I doubt it. If the Qt port is as good as I hope it will be - why bother? It 
depends a bit on what the effects of such a port are. If we get lots of 
code duplication and Haiku begins feeling slow because of layers piled upon 
layers, I'd vote for phasing out one of the options. Which one we will see 
if we ever get there... :-)

Best regards,
-Stephan

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