Plasma Active, Sailfish, and Ubuntu Phone Developers Discussing Common APIs 63
Jolla's Sailfish, Canonical's recently announced Ubuntu Phone, and KDE's Plasma Active environments are all using Qt5's QML for interface design. Unfortunately, the set of UI components provided by each, although similar, are incompatible with the others. After a chat on IRC between developers of all three platforms, they've decided to discuss the reasons behind each implementation, in the hopes that they can work toward a common architecture. "There are also discussions underway regarding other aspects of the bigger puzzle such as common package formats and delivery strategies. We are poised, should we keep our heads straight and our feet moving, to evolve that holiest of grails in the mobile space: an open and vendor neutral application development strategy built around the commonality of QtQuick and Linux. This is our Rome, which will not be built in a day, but which can become something significant in the world if we keep our heads and follow through."
wow (Score:1)
This is what I've been waiting for. The fragmentation of Linux with a GUI has been its downfall all along.
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umm...
I can only guess at this, but your comment seems to be lacking vast amounts of FACT... being that I have used Windows for ages and have used MANY different UI's... so saying using Windows is being forced into one UI is a very incorrect statement, and sadly shows great amounts of ignorance on your part (using an alternative UI at the moment on Windows 8 even)
If you where looking for an options limited OS, Mac and iOS are where you need to look. IIRC there where a few for an older version of Mac, but I
Re:wow (Score:4, Funny)
This is why Windows will never be ready for the desktop, with its fragmented UI. Until all the developers working on different UIs for Windows standardize on a single UI it'll just never take off.
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I'd prefer to have multiple UIs because... depending on what I'm doing, I may want a different UI.
I have XFCE set up in a VNC box for a lot of things, and KDE3 set up for normal at-console use. Why be stuck with one, when you yourself aren't using the system with just one use case?
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You realize it's possible for two different pieces of software to have quite different UIs, even if they use the same base set of widgets to build that UI, right?
Oh, you're bitching about whether or not the window chrome suits your preferred aesthetics? Then we can safely disregard your bitching in its entirety.
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I might as well use Windows.
So you'll go to the OS where the are more than a dozen alternate desktop shells to choose from?
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Honestly, having the different options is nice, and I've not had much issue except for one thing...
Selecting fonts/colors/sizes. I wish there were one store location where I could set all of them, and QT, GTK, whatever... would read that.
And don't pull a Microsoft. If you read the font color from a source, read the background color from there as well. I'm sick of different MS applications and libs honoring your font color and completely discarding your background color.
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This is what I've been waiting for. The fragmentation of Linux with a GUI has been its downfall all along.
Yeah, really, where's my Project Athena phone?
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While we're at it, can we ensure that GUI functions have an equivalent CLI function? In other words, if you're going to support mulitple GUI environments, include support for a null GUI as well.
Great news (Score:3)
I was pleasantly surprised to see Ubuntu pushing QML/QtQuick on its phone, it's really a great platform.
A great advantage of using pure QML for apps is that it requires no linking, just source compatibility. So Ubuntu's GUI elements could look very different from KDE's, but using the same property names a single app would work and look native on both. If only they agreed on this, it's probably the only way anyone except free software enthusiasts would write software for any of these platforms.
Phone manufacturers won't like it (Score:1)
Re: Phone manufacturers won't like it (Score:5, Insightful)
A common architecture would mean the phone manufactures couldn't keep their users locked to the platform where they have all their apps.
Which is why Android has been such a market failure.
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My belief is that the problem with Android is the reverse. It really is open... to it's customers. However, the customers of Android are not the end-users, it's the carriers. Carriers have always wanted locked platforms that they can leverage and brand. And so one of the big failings of Android was that they allowed the carriers to close the architecture to the end-user.
One of the iPhone's greatest achievements was locking the carriers out. If you notice... there's very little in the way of carrier bra
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B.S. you just had to buy a non branded phone. I never had a branded/locked GSM. Sure branded/locked phones might be cheaper, so you get what you pay for.
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It's exceedingly hard in the US, where few if any handset vendors sell into the retail channel. I suspect this is under threat from the carriers.
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Strangely enough I had to import my first android device from the USA.
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Android is not a common FREE architecture (unless all phones have gotten root and updated alternative flavors and the completely free SDK while I was looking the other side), so can't be used as an example.
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I think phone manufacturers are also a lot concerned with the fact that an open architecture makes their hardware more useful. They prefer selling no-root toys with updates controlled by them.
Visigoths (Score:5, Funny)
This is our Rome, which will not be built in a day, but which can become something significant in the world if we keep our heads and follow through."
Rome died due to lead poisoning and excessive military expenditures. If we're going to become Rome, I suggest BSD instead -- their mascots are a bit more menacing than a penguin. Also, the licensing terms are less restrictive.
Re:Visigoths (Score:5, Informative)
Rome is still there. If you are speaking of the Roman empire, it existed for over a thousand years. A feat yet to be achieved.
The Caliphates that lived next door would dispute that. But I can understand ignoring Islamic achievements like that since Rome was the quintessential western empire and the Caliphates only spanned three continents and had a far greater population. It also lasted nearly twice as long as the Roman empire, which actually didn't last over a thousand years... since the empire kept fracturing and falling into chaos over that timeframe while the Caliphates remained largely stable... and existed until the last century (1924, if you need a year).
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The original Muslims were conquered by the Mongols and the Turks who later converted to Islam and took on their customs. A lot of the Turkish people were Jewish at the time they conquered the arabs
Their empire did not last longer than Rome
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Their empire did not last longer than Rome
O RLY [wikipedia.org]?
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YA RLY [slashdot.org]!
I'm not the guy you're responding to here - I wrote the comment that I just linked you to. The Roman Empire existed in various forms for nearly 2000 years. The Caliphate made it for about 1300. The Caliphate did not last longer than Rome. Linking to a wikipedia article which actively undermines your point doesn't make you more believable.
"Heavens, AC, how does it undermine my point?!" you're not doubt exclaiming. Well the answer to that can be found in the section titled, "The Shadow Caliphate,
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What I make up from that is that the Caliphates isnt a empire on its own, is a term used for a series of empires:
" The term caliphate is often applied to successions of Muslim empires that have existed in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. "
So it more a governing system with a few extra's tacked on that where all shared by the empires that succeed eachother. Each of these empires had other rulers though.
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The original Muslims were conquered by the Mongols and the Turks who later converted to Islam and took on their customs. A lot of the Turkish people were Jewish at the time they conquered the arabs.
There were Jewish and, especially, Christian Turks (or rather Turkic peoples)*, but those that conquered the Arabs were long Muslim.
* And there are still plenty today.
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Rome still controlled most of Europe for a long time through the Church.
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Oh yeah, the Caliphate was totally stable! Except it wasn't. Guess what? Your history sucks just as bad as his does.
That's why assassinations, coups, and civil wars were common, and there was very little common "thread" binding together the various caliphates. See: Umayyad dynasty 7th-8th centuries; Abbasid dynasty (incidentally, they overthrew the Umayyad dynasty), 8th-13th century; Fatimid caliphate, which was coincidental with the Abbasid dynasty because it broke off from the Abbasids; the conque
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Well, your Roman maths really depend on adding West Roman years to East Roman years while pretending they're the same. It's not even the same geographical area. The Romans never really were all that great with numbers.
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No, I'm trying to point out that although the East Roman Empire lasted an impressive 1100 years (and more, really), the Roman Empire itself, which it split off from, didn't last quite that long, and that adding them together is disingenuous. If you weren't so busy defending Western civilisation from the Caliphate, you would probably notice that I did in fact not say anything about the Caliphate at all.
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As the AC says, the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire was originally part of the West Roman Empire. It was a schism, so they really were the same empire for a long time. Also, the Caliphates, as said above, were different empires. If you really want to get technical like that, the Holy Roman Empire actually endured until the mid 19th century, and started well before the Caliphates, which, by definition, couldn't have started until over 1000 years after the Roman empire, since the Caliphates were specifically Mu
Yes, but (Score:2)
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Ah, let's conveniently ignore India, China, and Egypt so we can make our lie look believable.
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Except all the mobile hardware already has drivers for and has been tuned to Android's linux kernel. The GPL has permitted things like Cyanogenmod which really causes the ecosystem to flourish. It would be imprudent to discard all that work for the sake of a license which will close off many vendors' platforms.
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It would be imprudent to discard all that work for the sake of a license which will close off many vendors' platforms.
When has prudence had anything to do with the indelible need of geeks to create Nifty Cool Things? When Linux was first created, it was viewed as one of the stupidest things someone could do with their time. Richard Stallman dwelled in bearded obscurity, and Hypercard was considered a good introduction to programming. And yet, here we are.
There's no reason we couldn't switch over to BSD... I mean, look at MacOS X. It didn't need the GPL to flourish.
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That's unrelated to his point, which would be that if you moved Android or whatnot to a BSD kernel, you would be even more locked out of these devices than you already are.
There's no reason you couldn't, but there are plenty of reasons not to. Particularly with respect to device manufacturers with a fetish for not releasing sources.
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Not necessarily. Depending on the goal of the company. In the case of Google, MeeGo/Sailfish and WebOS I think there's an interest in having the product open-source.
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And in the case of MeeGo/Sailfish, they actively use GPL projects. Google actively avoids and replaces them, other than the kernel. Handset vendors, however, have a perverse fetish for releasing as little as they can get away with.
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Also, the licensing terms are less restrictive.
Only if you're evil.
This seems relevent (Score:1)
http://xkcd.com/927/
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Hopefully, this won't be the case, since it's the actual developers of the former standards that are sitting together to discuss (and hopefully) simplemente a new one. This means that it'll actually come to replace the former standards, since it's not actually a third party's one.
Like with Gnome vs KDE (Score:2)
The holiest of grails? (Score:3)
an open and vendor neutral application development strategy
That sounds like the near future of HTML5 and more advanced browsers. But when you add...
... well, hmm, ok, the first part sounded great. What's with the second part?
Alliance with RIM? (Score:2)
The summary seemed Linux-centric - BB10 is Qt's best chance of achieving mass penetration in mobile devices.
Yes I know that QNX ain't Linux and BB10 ain't free software but sometimes the enemy of my enemy (WP8, iOS, Android) is my friend...
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'enemy' in the sense of being a rival platform that uses a non-standard C library and graphics stack that make dalvik somewhat non-portable to other platforms.
The distros mentioned in the summary are also based on the Linux kernel but feature a more traditional GNU userland and Qt graphics stack.
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Actually, I think it's ok to say that the other three distros are true unix-like GNU/Linux, while android is not unix-like at all.