Re: TrollTech releases QT for Mac under GPL
Re: TrollTech releases QT for Mac under GPL
- Subject: Re: TrollTech releases QT for Mac under GPL
- From: Andy Satori <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 16:02:43 -0400
From a Windows developer with a not insignificant investment in other
alternatives, including OS/2 (this will be important in a minute), I think
that the cross platform UI toolkits are generally a bad idea, or excuses for
inexperienced development management to buy expensive, and generally bulky
toolsets.
You see, an application that doesn't "look" and "feel" native to a given
platform is often worse than not offering something at all. OS/2 was a
great platform, but it suffered because of this issue. First, it ran DOS
apps better than DOS. Second, it ran Windows 3.1 apps, better than Windows.
Last, it was, at the time, the best Java platform. Why was this a problem?
There was no motivation to build native applications. Despite the fact that
any developer worth their salt could write a nice portable C or C++ library
that could target either platform, and then wrap the core library functions
with a Native GUI. Complete with all the native "look" and "feel" elements.
Meaning that the application don't have the Adobe, I'm a recompiled Windows
App, or the reverse on Windows.
A good example of this is Quanta Plus Gold. It has a Mac port, it's a QT
App. It is, in my opinion the best web development tool on the X-Windows
platform. It fits into the UI well, it looks native. Unfortunately, on the
Mac it looks like, well, and X-Windows App. I don't know of anyone that
would choose it over BBEdit or Dreamweaver, for the Mac. And that's coming
from someone that thinks Dreamweaver is the worst example of a cross
platform app ever created.
I think if you take a step back, you'll see that there is an excellent
example of the cross platform model I'm discussing.
Safari. Built on KHtml, it takes a nice, C++ core set of libraries, and
implements an enormous amount of functionality using them, relying on a very
thin layer of Cocoa (or Carbon, I don't know, haven't really looked) of
Native UI code.
For me, taking a set of core functionality components and building native
UI's is the best cross platform approach that you can take. Writing
flexible cross platform libraries is one phase of the dev cycle. Writing
native UI's can then be done in the best tool for a platform, be it Cocoa,
VB.NET, QT, or Gnome, or even all of them, as another phase.
Cocoa for Windows might be a nice idea, in theory, but in practice, I'd
rather Apple's development resources go into making the Cocoa for OS X
experience a compelling one for the development community. I'd rather see
native apps for the Mac that stimulate healthy competition to the Windows
platform. We have 3-4 years until Longhorn. During that time, Apple, and
it's third party development community have an opportunity to leapfrog
Windows in functionality and installed base. For the next 3-4 years, we
have to compete with Windows XP, and it's applications. During that time,
the Windows development community has to come to grips with an entirely new
development toolset, and mindset with .NET. VB -> VB.Net is a non-trivial
transition, MFC to C++.NET is a non-trivial transition, Java -> C# is an
almost trivial transition for new code, but porting existing code isn't.
Ok, that's enough rambling for me, but to say that I view QT for the Mac as
a non-issue, non-starter is an understatement. To say that I want those
apps is questionable, I tend to opt against Swing Java apps that have been
Mac-ified because they don't feel native.
Andy Satori - Windows Geek, Coding for the Mac because it's actually fun,
and Windows isn't anymore (was it ever? Or was it just the money.???)
On 6/21/03 3:23 PM, "Jeff Harrell" <email@hidden> pounded the keyboard
to produce:
>
On Saturday, June 21, 2003, at 07:51 AM, Marcel Weiher wrote:
>
>
> "We" do and did. Objective-C is cross-platform and open. Foundation
>
> has cross-platform/open implementations. AppKit has open
>
> implementations that are growing better cross-platform support as we
>
> speak. AppKit also had an excellent (working, released, used
>
> commercially) closed cross-platform implementation ( OPENSTEP/NT, aka
>
> YellowBox/Windows) that it promised to make available at "low to zero
>
> cost". However, Apple later reneged on that promise and killed the
>
> technology.
>
>
Do we know that for certain? I'd be surprised if Apple actually killed
>
Yellow Box for Windows. It seems like it would be a fairly easy thing
>
to maintain, once done, and when the time comes to write a big Windows
>
application (like, say, iTunes), Yellow Box for Windows might be a
>
pretty darned cool thing to have lying around.
>
>
(Wouldn't it be neat if we heard next week that, among all the other
>
goodies, the release of Panther would include a significant subset of
>
core technologies for Windows?)
>
>
--
>
email@hidden
>
http://homepage.mac.com/jharrell
>
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