Probably this question may be a simple one. Still I have not got answer from WWW.
tideSDK provides UI Module, and through which we can create same UI across platforms [ mac, windows, Linux].
MY Question:
What is the backend library tideSDK uses to bring UI?. Does it abstracts native UI Components and provides on presentation layer? Confused.
Kindly help.
UI Module of TideSDK provides abstract layer on top of native UI components. This means that the implementation of windowing apis are all native to the platform.
Taking example: Users of TideSDK would write the code in JavaScript language. all the commands would be natively implemented using the standard windows apis for "Windows XP / Win7 / win 8", and the JavaScript code will translate the instructions in native code for windows and execute appropriate commands. The same JavaScript code in osx will translate to native commands of Mac OS. and the same way it would work for linux.
Backend Parts of TideSDK has been implemented in variety of languages (c++ or languages inherited from c++) including VC++, Objective C++, C++.
We use different compilers (including Microsoft Visual Studio, g++, xcode) for different OS.
So basically to answer your question: TideSDK is the bridge between natively implemented code and JavaScript. It tries to interpret the JavaScript and translates everything to native language which the underlying operating system understands. By doing this the users of TideSDK will see consistent interface while dealing with various native parts while TideSDK abstracts out the detail.
I have taken UI Module as an example here but there are many modules available in TideSDK which provides variety of native functionalities.. checkout the api docs here
Related
Can any one suggest me a QT5 cross mobile platform library and APIs of XMPP protocol to develop a mobile cross platform chat client. This is my college project.
I'm stoped for three month and searching for suitable library and now, Not started yet!!!.
I have a few time to present and speack.
I am disappoint now.
Just a QT5 based XMPP Liberary for mobile programming (Android , IOS and maybe etc)
Swiften ( http://swift.im/swiften/ ) is not Qt, but is plain old C++ with Boost, and is used in the Swift client, which is Qt. It's cross platform desktop, iOS, Android. Not quite what you asked for, but usable in that environment.
(Bias: I'm responsible for those projects)
QXmpp is quite nice for Qt development.
When using Qt, the advantages in comparison to gloox or Swiften are obviously:
No need to convert any types (like QString to std::string)
No different signals from different libraries (in case of Swiften: boost signals and Qt signals)
No additional dependencies, only Qt, so creating builds for all platforms is easier
Another point that can be positive (but in some cases might also be negative) is that QXmpp's classes are mostly monolithic.
This makes the whole architecture very simple and easy to use, but not always that nicely extensible. Extending from outside of the library is however possible.
QXmpp uses DOM trees to parse the XML elements. The serialization is done using an XML stream writer.
(like Kev I'm biased here: I'm responsible for QXmpp)
I am currently looking at using PySide for mobile app development. I've done a few tutorials for creating desktop applications using Pyside and loving it. I understand PySide/PyQt is a port or mapping for Qt, and is usualy behind a little bit with Qt as developers of PySide/PyQt have to keep up with whatever happens in Qt.
I particularly want to develop for Android, BlackBerry and iOS. I also understand that Qt recently added support for Windows 8, as well as the more recent BlackBerry 10 OS.
My question: How well versed is PySide/PyQt in its current state with cross mobile application development.
Does it achieve mobile development by means of the WebKit component, allowing the use of everyday HTML, CSS and JavaScript?
Would it be a better option to consider PyQt for mobile app development, or PySide?
I think its not realistic to think you can use PySide/PyQt and Python in order to make one application suitable for all those platforms.
First of all the platform you want to develop for should support your programming language (Python) as well as the graphical framework (Qt) in order to make it work. This is mostly achieved by third party developers. If Python runs on your mobile operating system this does not say you can start developing and vice versa.
Mobile development is often done with QML (Qt Modeling Language). This allows you to make really cool and fancy interfaces on many platforms. You can connect it to your own Python code to make a real working application.
At this moment Qt is working on support for mobile devices. Most mobile operating systems like iOS and Windows Phone are not supported yet for the combination Python/Qt and mostly the support for working projects is not really big in comparison to the preferred languages of the operating systems.
Here is a list of mobile OS's which support the combination Python/Qt
Link to projects if there is a good link for a starting points is available
Android: PySide for Android
or if you like to use "webviews" instead of PySide: SL4A
Blackberry 10: BB-py
Meego: Python/Harmattan Project
SailFish OS: Harmattan apps (Meego) run without any problem
For your other questions I have a shorter answer.
The webkit component is intended as a content viewer component. Its not a component for building full HTML 5 apps.
The question which bindings for Qt are better is often asked. What you need to be aware of is that the old version of PyQt did almost the same as PySide. The difference was mainly in the license! However PyQt supports now Qt 5 while PySide doesn't, so make your own choice. I think you can make beautiful apps with both of them.
I am thinking about using PlayN to manage "common code" in Java and use PlayN to generate iOS, Android, and HTML native versions of the common code.
I figure I could then use the playn-generated native code and link with actual platform specific code (such as UI).
In other words,
Common Code libs in Java-> PlayN -> Native Commond Code Libs -> Link with Native App
Is the use of Play for the above workflow/pipeline appropriate? Any challenges?
Thank-you...
Firstly, you have to specify what you mean by "native" code for the different platforms.
On Android, your java files are specifically compiled/prepared for dalvik. So they are already "native" of a fashion, no work needed to be done here. If you want to get C/C++ native code for Android using the NDK, you're out of luck. PlayN doesn't do this and this is a hard problem (going from Java to C++)
If you take a look at the Maven modular layout of how PlayN is intended to be used, it isn't difficult to define a Factory interface in the common code and pass in a platform specific implementation for each module. It's no big deal to support Android specific functionality this way.
For the HTML version, you can use HTML libraries no problem using JNI, although really garnering specific functionality of the browser I'd imagined of limited value compared to what PlayN has already exposed. The one thing that is useful is text/keyboard input, although I'd recommend triplePlay https://github.com/threerings/tripleplay UI library as they've solved this, and it's an active project.
As for iOS, this might be more complicated as the iOS module is a bit of a hack where the compiled Java classes are run through an JVM runtime for .net (IKVM) and then uses the Monotouch tools to compile the whole thing to native code for iOS. See https://github.com/samskivert/ikvm-monotouch
So for iOS, you won't be able to bind the code to any form of native version, and what you have access to via the toolchain method depends very much on what Monotouch has catered for iOS (quite a lot I imagine), and also what IKVM-Monotouch has supported (I imagine the bare minimum to get PlayN working).
I'm not familiar enough with the Flash pipeline to give you an appraisal, although I think that it's quite flexible.
The above answer is written assuming your app is actually a game. If it is not and you intend to use the standard widget libraries for various platforms on mass, it should be possible. Choosing a good MVP framework would be good here, and depending on the assumptions it makes on different host environments will determine how easy the whole thing will be.
I'd recommend reading and comparing https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/articles/mvp-architecture and perhaps look at questions like What is your favorite GWT MVP Framework?
...although a lot of these frameworks might be GWT specific and not really have catered to being reused on other platforms.
I'm working with a PyQt application.
My workmates work with Java and they developed a whole framework (java code + xml files) to set different and new UIs to their desktop application.
I told them that Qt has styles sheets. I showed them by example how cool style sheets are.
I did not convince them. They want me to port their java framework to python.
I want to persuade them to use qt style sheets, but I need "serious" and technical arguments.
Examples are not enough.
By using Qt, you are using a commercially backed library that has a full support staff dedicated to maintaining it, not to mention the open source community that also supports it. You do not need to spend time and effort maintaining the UI framework so you can spend more time developing UI components specific to your applications.
Trying to develop a whole UI internally is a lot of work not only in implementation but also testing and maintenance. For such complicated systems, I would always recommend using an established library over doing an internal implementation.
I have started using Python for web development recently, it's kinda cool;
I have seen programs that are developed in QT/C++, which is good enough in terms of esthetics;
I have just noticed the new PySide project (which brings LGPL Qt license to Python and it doesn't support Windows yet).
In view of the above, I see the possibility of using Python + PyQt/PySide to develop cross platform apps in the future :) but I have several doubts right now:
Can PyQty/PySide be used to develop really complex/modern UI? Can somebody give me some points to have a look at some nice-looking screenshots of apps that are developed in Python+QT?
What about the performance of using Python + QT for a desktop app?
Thanks in advance!
Can PyQty/PySide be used to develop really complex/modern UI?
Desktop applications come in all sorts of varieties -- some nicely laid out, some extremely customized with virtually no semblance to a standard application for that OS. The same can be done with Qt/PyQt/PySide. As Alex said, there should be no visible difference between an application written with PyQt/PySide versus one written with Qt in C++. Any program written with Qt4 (using bindings or not) will, by default, look like a standard modern application.
Of course, there are features of recent Windows releases (and likely some on Mac OS X) that aren't supported immediately and by default in Qt, but you can almost always write some custom platform specific code for those situations where said features are truly important.
Can somebody give me some points to have a look at some nice-looking screenshots of apps that are developed in Python+QT?
The best and most open source program that I know of and which is written with PyQt, is Eric -- a Python based IDE.
What about the performance of using Python + QT for a desktop app?
For most applications the performance difference between a C++ Qt application and a PyQt application are not noticible. But if you really need performance, you can write certain parts of the application in C++ and make bindings available in Python so you can integrate the two.
TortoiseHg was re-designed using Qt and PyQt for its 2.0 release.
Here is one of several posted screenshots:
There is no aesthetic difference between the look and feel of C++ based Qt, and the PyQt and PySide wrappers on top of it. I use basically no desktop GUI apps so I couldn't point you to any implemented with any of these language/toolkit combos, but if you like the former, you'll be hard put to distinguish it in any way from the latter.
A bit late but for the record, apps such as Skype, GoogleEarth or the recent versions of VLC (media player & more) used the Qt libs.