Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
Helge Fredriksen wrote: Gunnar and Eskil, I guess you cannot give any commitment to it, but it would be really helpful if this group that is now forming could continue asking for some guidance from you and Eskil also AFTER one year has gone. We are hoping that a community of contributors will develop for the coming year, and will try to help make that happen. After that year has gone by, neither of us will be able to spend time on this project at work. But if there is a thriving community at that point, I wouldn't expect either of us to disappear completely either :-) We have spent some time on this project, and we definitely wish to see it succeed out in the wild. But, as you say, we cannot commit to anything beyond what we have spare time for. A year is a long time in terms of spare time, so right now I'll only say that I hope there's still interest in a year, and I hope I get the chance to help out. :-) -- Eskil ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
Eskil Abrahamsen Blomfeldt wrote: We have spent some time on this project, and we definitely wish to see it succeed out in the wild. But, as you say, we cannot commit to anything beyond what we have spare time for. I guess the issue for a lot of people comes down to a support channel. In the past, when bugs have been discovered that are tricky to fix, the response has been we'll get to work on that and you can expect a fix in the next release. Once that response becomes you're going to have to hope someone gets to work on that and you may or may not get a fix sometime, maybe never then people will immediately have a significant problem. Are we at that stage already? With no further releases planned from you and Gunnar, and with no community support anywhere near ready, I think we might be. It would have been so much better if the official announcement had said Qt Jambi is being discontinued, there will be one more official release before the FOSS community takes the project over. Is there any chance this might happen - one more official release while a community gets built up? I've been encouraged by the enthusiastic, albeit very limited, response that this list has revealed in the last few days. Maybe there are enough people and projects out there? Maybe a benefactor can be found? Maybe Sun or Nokia can find a bit of sponsorship money to pay someone a part time wage? But since the project has already been driven off the cliff, it's asking an awful lot for such a small group to get themselves together quickly enough to catch it! ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
Derek Fountain wrote: It would have been so much better if the official announcement had said Qt Jambi is being discontinued, there will be one more official release before the FOSS community takes the project over. Is there any chance this might happen - one more official release while a community gets built up? To clarify: Yes, there will definitely be more official releases. We are planning to release Qt Jambi 4.5.0_01 in not too long, and maintain and support Qt Jambi for one year after that release. In this time, it is very likely that patch releases to Qt Jambi 4.5 will be made available. From the press release: Qt Jambi will be maintained for one year after the March 2009 release of Qt Jambi 4.5.0_01 -- Eskil ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
Raymond Martin wrote: Hi all, On 8 March 2009 19:28:14 Mathias wrote: 1. The name. Qt Jambi. A powerful, mature, reliable and solid piece of software cannot be called Jambi. Whoever made that decision must have been out of his mind. Something like QTJ or JQT or even just a simple Qt for Java would have been A LOT better. I agree. I was often wondering where this jambi suffix came from. The present name is really not something that makes it simply to figure out or remember what the product is about. A serious product is better with a matter-of-fact type of name, QtJ or JQt would have been much better choices. The name Jambi stems from a province in Sumatra, reciding next to the island of Java in Indonesia. Though I wasn't involvned in the original naming, in hindsight, I'm easy to convince that Qt for Java would perhaps have been a better name ;) best regards, Gunnar ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
Gunnar Sletta wrote: The name Jambi stems from a province in Sumatra, reciding next to the island of Java in Indonesia. LOL! At least we now know... Seems a rather good idea for a company-internal codename got stuck and became the commercial product name. ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
I'm in, what about you? Although I have plenty of free time at the moment, I don't know enough about Java internals, I don't know enough about C++, I don't know enough about Qt and I don't know enough about JNI. This was my point from an earlier post: Qt Jambi requires a lot of skills and a lot of internal knowledge about some seriously complex technology. If someone were going to pay me to learn and maintain it all, I'd jump at the chance. Since that's unlikely to happen I'm genuinely sad to say that I'll have to decline. ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
2009/3/9 Mathias listo.math...@googlemail.com: I'm in, what about you? We are currently working hard on an open source product built on top of Qt Jambi. Half a year ago we made the decision for Qt after a lot of analysis and comparison of alternatives. However, we did not expect Trolltech to drop Jambi in the way it is doing now. Still, after having considered our options we will stick with Jambi. I think every framework or toolkit needs at least a few active, real-world sample/lamp post/flagship projects with some visibility in order to get people excited, serve as real-world demonstrations of what's possible and build trust. This is why I am really missing a Who-is-using-Jambi-page with an (ideally long) list of diverse, real-world applications. Since we are planning to have our project stick around for some time to come I would be willing to work with other community members to drive Jambi development from the real-world perspective. Of course, no single project will be using even close to the full feature set Qt is offering. This is why we need more applications to step up and share their experiences, contribute solutions, report problems and drive development. Who else on this list is building or maintaining an application available to the open public (be it open or closed source) that has a dependency on Qt Jambi? Please come out and let us know! We need to compile a list and see where we stand... Hello I'm implementing some dynamic GUI interface programing where I get some XML file with meta info and using it I can get data from some place and then use XSLT transform to create a JUI file that I load dynamically and add events. Jambi was then answer to my prayers, since it completely separates the GUI from the code, is good looking and extremely easy to create the JUI XML and also it is in Java which is my company chosen programing language... The project is closed source, but if needed I can provide some small case study. I'm really apprehensive on how this will turn out... Cheers, Mathias Regards Brian ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
On Monday 09 March 2009, Mathias wrote: Who else on this list is building or maintaining an application available to the open public (be it open or closed source) that has a dependency on Qt Jambi? Please come out and let us know! We need to compile a list and see where we stand... Cheers, Mathias I'm developing Moonlight|3D (see http://www.moonlight3d.eu ), an open source 3D modelling and animation tool. I have been working on it more or less continously since 2003. I practically rewrote the program's UI when the first Qt Jambi preview releases appeared. This took me several months. I don't even want to think about rewriting the program's UI based on yet another toolkit (there's a long and painful story hidden there that you most likely don't want to hear about - trust me). I'd rather stop working on that project for good. Moonlight|3D uses quite some things from Qt Jambi: QGLWidget, QDockWidget, and QGraphicsView come to my mind instantly. There's also a nice set of QWidget- derived widgets that are implemented in pure Java (for example the toolchest, the timeline and the colour dialog). If the UI were more polished and the program less buggy overall I'd say that this is a good candidate for a hypothetical Qt Jambi showcase ;). Regards, Gregor signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
A few additional points: * I am just starting Java, I like it (though I prefer Python) and seems like for GUIs, Qt has no reall competition * My Java instructor had never heard of Qt or Jambi -- all java devs should at know of Jambi by now considering its capabilities * that it isn't easily available in all major Linux distros cannot be a good sign I'm still an outsider looking in. But I think Qt Software needs to work to making Qt C++ as redistributable and deployed as Java now is, so that app developers only need to worry about shipping bindings. I still maybe give Jambi a try for a small project, but the prospect for future serious projects does not seem healthy. ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
On Monday 09 March 2009, Mathias wrote: Gentlemen, having followed the recent discussions on the prospects of Qt Jambi in this list pretty closely I cannot help but share my point of view on this. IMHO Trolltech Qt Jambi has had and does have one serious problem. However, this problem is not of a technical kind. Technically Jambi is an extremely valueable addition to the Java world, it's simply the best desktop UI framework available for Java. Swing is a nice try but has never really been used by it's creators/maintainers for anything but small demo apps, and it shows. SWT can match Qt for performance but falls behind in every other dimension (elegance, extensiveness, extensibility...). Trolltech has been developing Qt for many years, lots of software has been written on top of it, it has matured and is well maintained. Using the existing Qt C++ codebase to fill the Java desktop UI framework void was an excellent idea and I think (even though there might still be some bugs here and there) Gunnar, Eskil and the others have done a really good job making it work. Qt Jambi is excellent. The Qt Software people also. These words say it all. The reason that Qt Jambi is facing problems is not a technical one. IMHO Trolltech has done a truly terrible job with Jambi MARKETING. Being a software development company it seems Trolltech has not put enough focus on selecting the right people for its marketing/PR functions. Let me give you three points to support my case: [...] 2. Creating visibility, fostering adoption, seeding a community Three crucial marketing tasks. Three complete fails. Jambi has been released more than 1.5 years ago and I bet more than 98% of Java developers have never heard of it. If you look at java forums, blogs and the ever recurring SWT vs. Swing discussions you will not see people pointing to Qt for rescue. Not because they think Qt is not up for the task. Simply because they don't know about it. What has Trolltech done to create visibility for Jambi? Apart from good old advertising (both on- and off the web) I could think of visiting and speaking at big java events, organize contests, give out prizes for the best Jambi app, recruiting and supporting lamp post projects, embracing the java centric academia, ... whatever. Jambi doesn't even have its own proper website. It has a reference documentation pages. If it does have a reference projects list somewhere I haven't found it. There is no community. As some of you have pointed out, traffic on this list is extremely low for a project with the punch potential of Qt for Java. This is not the fault of Gunnar or Eskil who I think do an excellent job on their end. It's a MARKETING job to reach out to the target group, get them excited and bring them on. Well, I strongly disagree here. Qt Jambi is definitely known to the majority of Java developers whom I talked to in the last year. And these people told me they were interested in taking a closer look, but never found the time. Therefore, my impression is that the markert for Java GUI toolkits is saturated with solutions that are good enough for most applications. Especially SWT is of that kind. And with Eclipse RCP and the huge variety of products already built on top of this platform a lot of professional work is done with the Eclipse RCP (and therefore SWT) as a target. Qt Jambi simply arrived late. This was an uphill battle from the start. 3. Communication. The prime example for the serious lack of professionalism in Trolltech marketing/PR is the press release issued on Feb. 19th (and now featured prominently on second place in the google results for a search for Qt Jambi). The content consists of three main points: - Trolltech will reduce resources dedicated to Jambi. - Jambi will be put under LGPL. - Trolltech will host and help maintain a community-driven Qt Jambi implementation To me this sound like two good news and one bad one. The second point is excellent news! Now, if you had to choose a title for that press release, what would it be? I would think something like Qt Jambi opened up to community or Qt Jambi community to receive more focus or anything else highlighting the positive points. Instead Trolltech decided to go for Qt Software to discontinue Qt Jambi after 4.5 release. To me this reads like bad news. Really bad news. A tomb stone. Over and out. That's it. Done. Whoever in their right mind and interest in seeing Jambi prosper would issue a press release with that title? This is a stab in the back of all the Trolltech developers who have spent many months building the great Qt Java bridge available today. And it's the most effective countermeasure to any effort put into the third content point. It will take an enormous amount of work reverting the damage done by that PR title. The title is directed at the people who have the money, not devs. And it gives them the right message: Qt Jambi as a
Re: [Qt-jambi-interest] The Jambi Problem
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:07 PM, Gregor Mückl gregormue...@gmx.de wrote: On Monday 09 March 2009, Mathias wrote: Qt Jambi may be in an ill health. But that doesn't mean that it is really dying. We'll only know for sure when it's dead and rotting away and not a day earlier. I find it hard to believe that people will pickup Jambi now in its current state for a project. Those colleagues you've spoken may be in a minority, and based on what you've said will probably never pickup Jambi as is now. -- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com ) ___ Qt-jambi-interest mailing list Qt-jambi-interest@trolltech.com http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-jambi-interest
