Plans [was: Re: Gconf or GSettings? - leading to a wider question]

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Jan 20, 2013, at 7:21 AM, Lubomir I. Ivanov wrote:

> just gave Qt a try out session for the first time, and i can say i'm a
> bit impressed.
> 
> after 5 hours reading docs and forums here is a mockup where i only
> had to write 200lines of code or so:
> http://i49.tinypic.com/rsztjn.jpg

I hope the rendering quality of the oval is not indicative of the quality of anti-aliasing available :-)

> - it is using a UI designer (/resource editor) which generates code
> http://ubuntu.allmyapps.com/data/q/t/qt4-designer-qt-4-designer/UBUNTU-9.04/widget_editor_qt_designer.png
> - the executable is 110kb (stripped) with no dependencies on windows!
> - simple XML parsing is builtin
> - has divelist tree view mockup
> - has a drawable frame
> - tabs, menus with signals
> 
> things about Qt i didn't like after reading comments and trying things out:
> - API broken between 4.x, 5.x. also no 5.x mingw build for windows yet.

5.x is very new - I'll ask Thiago what the plans are for the Windows side. Native Windows support is of course available (it's actually the primary platform on the commercial side, I hear).

> - everything is UTF-16

YUCK. You are kidding. That's a total no go if that is true.

> - the project make files (qmake) can be a bit of a trouble in the long
> run, i think

Can't be worse than our hacked Makefile

> - classes have to be subclassed for basic functionality like signals
> and painting events
> (alternatives seem hacky)
> - heavy use C++ syntax, although stream syntax for example is not
> strictly needed.
> "something << 123456" usually has an alternative "something.add(123456)";

That is my biggest concern. How much of the OO / C++ crap would this drag into the project. Much as I hate some of the decisions in Gtk and many of the bugs we ran into - at least it's done in a sane programming language and I know I can debug things and make them work. I actually looked at a few larger open source Qt applications and they make your eyes bleed. Granted, that may be the style preference of those developers, but overall it has me worried.

And, of course, Linus is right. At this point we have a TON of Gtk code that would all have to be rewritten. I'm still not convinced whether this can possibly be worth it.

Just for the record - before we spend too much time on this I want to get Subsurface 3.0 out.

On my list of things for this to happen are

- a few loose ends: 
-- Jan wants to add CC support to the dive planning
-- Linus wanted to change the config setup to store much more (most?) of it on a per file basis (and there are a few design decisions still open on that front)
-- better GPS/Map solution (who is driving this part? I think we are relatively close, we should stop creating all these new windows, we need some visualization that there is GPS info for a dive… small things like that)
-- ideally at least some integration of the companion app in order to import dive locations (Pierre was looking into this and Lubomir did the first rather incomplete integration)
-- I'm sure I'm missing a few other loose ends (I also need to go through what's in trac)
- once all that is done we need to freeze the strings so people can do translations again
- in parallel lots of testing of the current feature set, especially all the new functionality; dive planning, deco calculations, etc

I had been hoping to release 3.0 in early February - I worry if that's still realistic

/D

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