Re: future of Hildon

[Quim Gil <quim gil nokia com>]

Hi,

In my opinion the future of Hildon is closely related to the future of
GTK+ and GNOME Mobile, but that is actually not the real point of your
question. See below.

ext Gour wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:20:04 +0100
>>>>>>> "Alberto" == Alberto Garcia >>>>>> wrote:
> 
> Alberto> That's right, and is one variable to consider (although more
> Alberto> different devices don't necessarily mean more end users). But
> Alberto> well, I'm not a futurologist and I don't know how much Maemo 5
> Alberto> or Moblin 2 will succeed :)
> 
> I'm not futurologist either, but based on what I've seen, Intel showed
> demo of smart-phone running Moblin and it is expected to see first
> smart-phones next year after launching of Moorestown cpu, although the
> real stuff in terms of power saving is expeceted with Medfield platform.
> 
> Otoh, N900 is 4th step out of 5 in Nokia's plans and it is doubtful if
> it will succeed among smart-phone buyers or will it be consumed only by
> geeks.
> 
> Since I plan to write open-source app (kind of 'lite' version of
> desktop companion) using GTK+, it seems to be that Moblin which
> targets netbooks and MDI is more appropriate platform than Maemo.
> 
> Alberto> I don't think that any GTK/Hildon version for Maemo 6 will be
> Alberto> developed by Nokia, when they announced it during the GCDS
> Alberto> they said clearly that GTK would be maintained by the
> Alberto> community.
> 
> Right. GTK will be maintained by community, but most probably not
> developed further 'cause Nokia is focusing on Qt which means that
> Hildon is probably dead-end on the Maemo.


I personally think this is an interesting discussion done around the
wrong factors. :)

What about these questions:

- Are you targeting a pocketable form factor or something more MID-Netbook?

- Is touch UI mandatory, optional or irrelevant?

- Is finger friendliness mandatory, optional or irrelevant?

- Are you fine with traditional widgets or do you want graphics
acceleration and much more UI flexibility?

- Are you for grabbing something already existing and stable or are you
willing to experiment and create own widgets?

- When are you planning to have a first real and stable release?

Get a crispy answer to these questions and most probably you will get a
crispy answer about the right libraries and platform to base your
development. Running / porting your stuff to "the other platform" will
probably be one of your most trivial problems.

-- 
Quim Gil
open source advocate
Maemo Devices @ Nokia