IBM Picks Qtopia Over PalmOS And PocketPC

Bill Kendrick writes "ZDNet, Geek.com and others are reporting IBM's decision to choose Trolltech's Qtopia (the embedded version of their Qt library, used by the Sharp Zaurus PDA) in their forthcoming devices. See the announcement at Trolltech's website, and an earlier press release at IBM.com." Here's an earlier post about the new IBM reference platform.

Comments

Re:Why not Linux?

[WindBourne]

Qtopia is qt on embedded Linux. Same environment as Sharp's Zaraus. Good Stuff.

Broadening the user base

[bluegreenone]

I am glad to see this since it should broaden the Qtopia user base significantly. You may or may not know that Qtopia is also used by the Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA (both the Sharp software and OpenZaurus distros use it). There is also the OPIE project, which is basically a suite of PDA apps built on top of Qtopia. This bodes well for getting more Liunx PDA users on board, and provides some existing apps for those using Qtopia for the first time.

This is probably not needed,

[euxneks]

But I didn't know and that means there is probably a bunch of others out there too..:

Qt is a multiplatform, C++ application development framework. One source runs natively on Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac 0S X, and embedded systems.

Go here for a brief overview from Trolltech.

Pretty cool with the customization aspect.. Is there any programmers out there who have some real experience? This is pretty interesting to me, and I wouldn't mind hearing some feedback and maybe links or something. =)

Re:This is probably not needed,

[Balinares]

> Is there any programmers out there who have some real experience?

I have no experience of the embedded version of Qt, so keep in mind I'm talking about the X11/Windows library here.

In three words: it fucking rocks.

Qt is simply the single best designed piece of software I have -ever- seen. While it sets out for a huge task, being a completely self-sufficient C++ framework, a multiplatform one at that (and it can indeed easily replace the entire MFC), the class hierarchy is extremely clean, and it's very easy to get the hang of it. Actually, the entire documentation is absolutely excellent, clear and very well cross-referenced. I've never stayed stuck while looking for some info in there (quite unlike the MSDN documentation!). Go take a peek, someday.

One of the nice things with Qt is, if you need to do some basic task, Qt makes it trivial. Reading a file line by line is an example I was confronted to just today: using the MFC's idea of files, it's tedious at best -- gotta do the nitty gritty job manually. Wasted time. Using Qt, it's, well, trivial.

The other thing about Qt is, if you need to do something complex, Qt makes it very straightforward. For instance, yesterday, our VB programmer was trying to make a custom widget that lets you stack frames vertically, each under its own tab, and showing only one at a time. After hours of work, he got to work a simple version of it that couldn't resize, among other shortcomings. Well, it took me much less time to rapidly put together the same thing in Qt, only it worked right away without those shortcomings, could accept any kind of subwidget, and, oh, of course, could resize at will and would work right away on any platform. Keep in mind that this guy is very experienced with his tools, while I'm a relative beginner with Qt.

There are countless useful features in Qt. For instance, it doesn't duplicate data when duplication is not either required or specifically requested by the programmer. Copy a QString or a QPixmap ten times, and Qt will keep only one copy of the data in memory for all the instances. Modify one of the ten instances, and Qt will then replicate its data to modify it without touching the nine other instances.

And those guys actually license their boon of a tool under the GPL. That's almost too good to be true.

Anyway, enough rambling. If you're a programmer, do yourself a favor, and check out Qt. Even if you don't end up using it, you will likely learn quite a lot about how powerful object orientation can be when used by people who know what they are doing.

Re:This is probably not needed,

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

While I'm a big fan of Qt, I'm also a fan of wxWindows, and I'd like to point out that wxWindows does all of the things you mentioned.

Qt is simply the single best designed piece of software I have -ever- seen. While it sets out for a huge task, being a completely self-sufficient C++ framework, a multiplatform one at that (and it can indeed easily replace the entire MFC), the class hierarchy [trolltech.com] is extremely clean, and it's very easy to get the hang of it. Actually, the entire documentation [trolltech.com] is absolutely excellent, clear and very well cross-referenced. I've never stayed stuck while looking for some info in there (quite unlike the MSDN documentation!). Go take a peek, someday.

The wxWindows documentation is online here. Go take a peek - it's remarkably complete and detailed.

One of the nice things with Qt is, if you need to do some basic task, Qt makes it trivial. Reading a file line by line is an example I was confronted to just today: using the MFC's idea of files, it's tedious at best -- gotta do the nitty gritty job manually. Wasted time. Using Qt, it's, well, trivial [trolltech.com].

wxWindows provides a few ways of doing this:
you can either use a wxTextFile or a wxTextInputStream.
Both give you a ReadLine method or equivalent.

The other thing about Qt is, if you need to do something complex, Qt makes it very straightforward. For instance, yesterday, our VB programmer was trying to make a custom widget that lets you stack frames vertically, each under its own tab, and showing only one at a time. After hours of work, he got to work a simple version of it that couldn't resize, among other shortcomings. Well, it took me much less time to rapidly put together the same thing in Qt, only it worked right away without those shortcomings, could accept any kind of subwidget, and, oh, of course, could resize at will and would work right away on any platform. Keep in mind that this guy is very experienced with his tools, while I'm a relative beginner with Qt.

Also easy with wxWindows. Their Sizer classes are by far the best method I've ever seen for laying out automatically resizable dialogs.

There are countless useful features in Qt. For instance, it doesn't duplicate data when duplication is not either required or specifically requested by the programmer. Copy a QString or a QPixmap ten times, and Qt will keep only one copy of the data in memory for all the instances. Modify one of the ten instances, and Qt will then replicate its data to modify it without touching the nine other instances.


wxWindows also reference-counts strings, bitmaps, and many other common data types.

And those guys actually license their boon of a tool under the GPL. That's almost too good to be true.

Unless you want the Windows version - that costs an arm and a leg. wxWindows is GPL for all platforms (and it currently supports more platforms than Qt).

Anyway, enough rambling. If you're a programmer, do yourself a favor, and check out Qt. Even if you don't end up using it, you will likely learn quite a lot about how powerful object orientation can be when used by people who know what they are doing.

Agreed. Check out both, though. Honestly, if I had a large budget to create a commercial cross-platform application, there's a good chance I'd choose Qt. But wxWindows has its advantages. For a free cross-platform software project, there's no contest: wxWindows is free on all platforms, with a very comparable feature set.

correction

[scm]

QT/Embeded is the embedded version of the QT library. Qtopia (formerly QPE) is a PDA operating environment based on QT/Embedded.

After Sharp decided to use Qtopia on the Zarus, TrollTech seemed to lose interest in the Qtopia version for Familiar on the iPaq, so an open source fork was started called Opie http://opie.handhelds.org/

One of their goals is binary compatabilty with Qtopia though.

Yes and No

[burgburgburg]

If you go here, you'll see that they have three licenses: a Commercial Development licence, a Commercial OEM license and a GPL Development license. So it depends on what you're planning on doing with what you build. You can't build a commercial product with the GPL license.

Re:Linux footprint too general-purpose.

[Sunnan]

Most of that stuff can be removed at compile time.

This is the new battlefield

[tom_conte]

Yeah, well, is IBM really going to be able to compete with Symbian and Microsoft? Sure, it's nice to see a dinosaur company like IBM making bold moves, but they're just one step behind the other guys. I would say IBM is an outsider in the new battle for the "pervasive OS". Today, the big contenders are Nokia/Sony Ericsson + Symbian and (as usual) Microsoft. Sure the Zaurus is nice, but check out the 3GSM news and all you will see is Symbian and M$.

GGI was never an X replacement

[maynard]

It was a combination of a kernel driver for the video card and a set graphics libraries, which working together would provide a common hardware abstraction layer for all applications which might need to paint to a display. This way all applications could use the same functions to paint the display no matter what the underlying hardware. They then created a GGI X Server as a proof of concept that X could work over GGI. The real intention was to replace SVGAlib and get X drivers out of userspace - for both performance and security reasons. Pretty much what we have today with frame buffer and DRI support in the kernel, but far advanced for its time. There was some kind of falling out between Linus and the project so it never got added to the baseline kernel, the politics of which I can't remember. This is going back to 1996 or so. Too bad, it was a good idea which didn't survive.

You might be thinking of the Berlin Project, which I see has moved over to something called Fresco. Haven't followed up on that in some time so I can't speak to its current development activity.

Cheers,
--Maynard

Re:Not to mention...

[swillden]

Not to mention a change of administration in the executive branch leading to a kinder, gentler, nation for our formerly oppressed corporate underclass.

Go back and reread your the history of the case; the soft-pedaling started during the Clinton administration. This isn't a Clinton/Bush or Dem/Rep issue, more a failure of the system as a whole. I'd have to go back and look again myself, but ISTR that the DOJ was toughest near the beginning, which was during the Bush Sr. administration.

And for those who are convinced that only the Reps favor corporate America, keep in mind that the Dems are heavily behind the push to maintain Big Media's stranglehold.

Re:Syncs with all OSes, opensource OS

[zsazsa]

Also, Qtopia is open source... I think I want a Qtopia device now :-D (Although none really have the capabilities of my Clie NX70 :)

Go out and buy a Sharp Zaurus. It has a 206Mhz StrongArm, keyboard, SD slot, and a CF slot that accepts memory, cameras, ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth cards. What does the NX70 have over that, other than a built-in camera?

The Zaurus SL-5500 is a good PDA and an even better "handheld computer." The SL-5600M will be even more capable when it is released.