snowloadcount wizard gui in qt, qt for android then in gtkmm(gtk3)

[David Marceau <uticdmarceau2007 yahoo ca>]

I did a small gui that is a wizard reflecting an actual form being used
for counting snow disposal trucks which dump snow at different locations
in Ottawa, the city manages them with tickets and passes.  At the end of
the shift, the form is submitted to the supervisor with the statistics
along with who generated them.

Here is the qt/qt for android one:
http://adequatech.ca/snowloadcount.tar.xz
It's features:
-desktop linux target
-android 4.2.2 armv7 target
-saves snowloadcount report into a binary persistent storage file.
-has the the capacity to send summary via sms through qtjni support.
tested sendsms through qt and it works.
-does not load/view report on this, but can do it no problem.
-does not email report, but can do it no problem with android api or
through cpp libs out there like vmime and curl.
-androidmanifest file permissions are tricky and the qtcreator has bugs
with this respect.  when you edit the androidmanifest within the gui,
they don't seem to get deployed properly so I needed to build by hand
using ndk_build and ant dist/debug.
-there is no mainwindow, there is only the wizardgui window. qtcreator
loves to generate a main window for desktop and android apps when first
going through their ide to create the app skeleton. mainwindow is removed.
-Time to create: a good week (5 days)

Here is the c++/gtkmm version compiled for i686 linux:
http://adequatech.ca/gtksnowloadcount.tar.xz
Its features:
-builds on any manjaro,ubuntu, debian box
make -B -f Makefile
-saves the the snowloadcount report into a textfile persistent storage
file using standard boost serialization infrastructure possibly now part
of the ISO C++11 standard.
-no capacity to send sms because it's not on a smart phone, but ubuntu
touch has ofono scripts to send_sms so it could be possible to run this
gtk app on ubuntu touch/unity because it is gtk-based under-the-hood.
-loads/views a previous report in read-only mode.  implemented using
boost serialization as mentioned before.
-does not email anything, but easily added with vmime/curl apis.
-there is no mainwindow, there is only the assistantgui(gtk's name for
wizard) window.
-Time to create: two days

> From all this, I can easily say that I prefer building apps on the
desktop/server rather than on the android devices and on ubuntu touch
devices.  There iteration time to build/debug/deploy with arm devices is
much slower than on desktop/server boxes.  I have no patience for
slowness on mobile devices.  Time is precious.  The simulators for both
android and ubuntu touch still crawl considering you have to add in
android/ubuntu touch bootup time to a clean run session mostly everytime
to make sure everything is ok beforehand.
The lack of screen real-estate on touch devices implies needing more
pages to fill forms out which is something very common to do.  QML and
it's declarative language are not for me.  Too much automagic stuff
going on behind the scenes and it's not easy to decode what the qml is
doing and when just by looking at the qml code simply because qml is not
explicit enough for me.  I prefer the c++ namespace and ada's required
explicity everywhere.  qml/qt-declaratives are the reverse of everything
I learned about what's good for long-term software maintenance.  C++
with gtkmm is straightforward and no qtcreator/gui builder necessary.
Just coding it by hand gives exact results.
Compare the gtk makefile with the qt makefiles and judge which one is
easier to understand and to work with.

I am going to rewrite the same app in golang with the go-gtk binding.  I
can foresee it will be the most enjoyable to code.  I enjoyed coding web
stuff with golang over any other language by far.  IMHO golang is a
better c++.

A few wishlist features although not part of gtk's mission:
-sending emails via gtk apis(non-gui and gui) with optional attachments
-sending sms via gtk apis(non-gui and gui) with optional attachments
-gtkmm for android
-gtkmm for ubuntu touch

I send positive thoughts for a much brighter future for Gtk in this new
year.

Cheers,
David Marceau
http://adequatech.ca