Re: [dev] Qt as a valid replacement for VCL

[Juergen Schmidt]

Thorsten Behrens wrote:

Éric Bischoff wrote:
Nokia recently relicensed the Qt library under a triple license : GPL, LGPL, 
and commercial.


Qt is cute, modern, C++, easy to program with, and multiplatform. Wouldn't it 
be the ideal replacement for VCL, now that LGPL is an option?



Hi Eric,

why are you following up to my (unrelated) lib unloading mail?!

Anyway, besides concerns others have voiced regarding text layout 
accessibility, changing the underlying toolkit of OOo in the way it
is proposed here is the most far-reaching change to the code base I
can conceive of, short of changing the implementation language from
c++ to managed c++ or somesuch.

So that's nothing we should do on a whim - quite the contrary, we
should never ever again bind ourselves against the implementation of 
one specific toolkit, but rather code against an abstract interface.
i fully agree but not with the current toolkit that is more or less  a 
pour rip-off of VCL in may areas. Not easy to use and of course a lot of 
things are missing.


If we would move forward in this direction i would strongly recommend an 
incompatible change and redesign of the toolkit or a complete new one. 
First and foremost should we make use of the UNO ease of use features, 
means multiple inheritance, service constructor etc. to make it more 
comfortable and easier to use.


It will be probably always a little bit more overhead or not so 
comfortable than using a toolkit XY directly. But as Thorsten mentioned 
we will have a clear abstraction and no dependencies on one specific 
toolkit. That was and still is the main design idea of the toolkit. 
However it was addressed and implemented in the past.




Along that lines, see the work that's happening around dialog
auto-layouting and the awt toolkit
(http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/programme/friday_1470.pdf)
we need the layouter, we need it, we need it ... When will it be really 
usable?


Juergen




Of course, having qt then provide _one_ implementation of that
toolkit interface is quite the plan (as having a gtk, Win32  Cocoa 
one). And the license change definitely helps there.


Cheers,

-- Thorsten

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Re: [dev] Qt as a valid replacement for VCL

[Thorsten Behrens]

Juergen Schmidt wrote:
 Along that lines, see the work that's happening around dialog
 auto-layouting and the awt toolkit
 (http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/programme/friday_1470.pdf)
 we need the layouter, we need it, we need it ... When will it be really  
 usable?

Hi Juergen,

oh, it's quite usable - though the general answer to that question
is of course the usual when it's done, which will be a lot earlier
with more people working on that. ;)

For more details, and for arbitration of volunteers, Janneke is the 
one in the know, and on Cc.

-- Thorsten

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Re: [dev] Qt as a valid replacement for VCL

[Thorsten Behrens]

Éric Bischoff wrote:
 Recoding for qt, gtk, win32, and Cocoa is a serious duplication of efforts.
 
 If the purpose for having an abstract layer and porting on so many APIs is 
 PORTABILITY to many operating systems, then this duplication of efforts 
 becomes 
 useless, because Qt is already very portable.
 
 If the reason for this effort is strategic INDEPENDANCY towards one library 
 provider, then yes it makes a lot of sense to have abstraction layers in the 
 middle.
 
Hi Eric,

definitely the latter, not in the sense of mistrust against the
provider, but knowing the fundamental law that only one thing is
constant - that things are changing. Quite as Qt appears like a good
choice today, vcl's design appeared as a good choice back when the 
decision was made.

And btw, qt and vcl are actually quite similar in their core design,
and thus share the same weaknesses, conceptually - they don't use
native widgets, but only native look (which is noticeable even
today, if you look closely, and is surely not becoming less of a
problem, c.f. Apple's deprecation plans...). In this light, I guess
wxWidgets would even be the better choice iff we'd want to port
against one specific implementation.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

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