I'm not sure this thread belongs in this category but I'll ask anyway.
I want to start developing some apps for the n900 and I'm not sure if I should use GTK or Qt for it.
I'd love to hear your input regarding this choice (pros and cons). You need to keep in mind that I intend to make the apps as compatible as possible with the previous and future releases of Maemo. However, I'm more interested in being able to port it to Harmattan.
You answered the question - if you care about Harmattan (and are not a GTK guru already) the choice is quite clearly Qt, especially since it will be officially supported on Fremantle from Q1 next year.
If you are looking for future compatibility then Qt is the official path. If you need something right now look at the 4.5 community port. If you still have a bit of time to play with then the official Qt 4.6 port is the best path
Also remember that it is likely to be easier to port to symbian (in Qt) as well, you may not be interested in symbian directly but it could give your app more attention.
GTK:
+ life is easier on Fremantle with GTK as this is the native toolkit with full support for everything
+ can write code in any language
+ cross-platform (Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac)
- community maintained documentation not always easy to read or complete
- GTK will be officially dropped for Harmattan and will only be community-supported (like Qt is now)
- some say Qt is faster than GTK
- object-oriented GObject C is something you have to get used to, but with higher languages, this isn't required
Qt:
+ will be the native toolkit on Harmattan
+ Qt apps written today are supposed to work mostly on Harmattan
+ code-compatible with Symbian in the near future
+ good documentation
+ cross-platform (Linux, Unix, Windows, Symbian)
- cannot write code in C, you need at least C++
- C++ code is not real C++, but has to be preprocessed by a special preprocessor for compiling
If you have time to wait until Q1 2010, then Qt might appeal to you then, if you want to code for future (Maemo 6) too. See http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=330308 thread for more info.
If you want to do things right now, and specifically in a way that Maemo 5 does things in the UI, then using Hildon (and Gtk) might be more appealing to you right now.
I suppose I can wait a little more and just go with Qt (that's if I only have to wait until Q1 of 2010). I could use the time to study Qt a little more and get some pointers on C++, since I'm not familiar with it.
I'm not sure this thread belongs in this category but I'll ask anyway.
Thread moved to the Development forum, but don't let selecting another forum initially concern you. Thanks for joining the community and jumping in like this!
