MeeGo Touch Framework

Revision as of 15:33, 28 August 2010

MeeGo Touch is a Qt based application development framework targeting mobile touch screen devices. It is part of MeeGo API (along Qt 4.7). It provides all the necessary building blocks for creating native applications that follow the MeeGo Handset UX guidelines . The framework itself is built on top of the Qt Graphics View Framework.

The source code is here : [1]

The documentation is here : [2]

Architecture

(to do) (see documentation)

Relation to Qt

The Framework sits on top of Qt. It extend it and adapt it to touchscreen interface, providing convenient classes and widget for a MeeGo Application on a touch screen.

Should I use this framework to write an application for MeeGo ?

This topic was discuss in the forum here : [3]

The quick summary : if you value application portability and API stability it is probably better to stick with pure Qt. It is the encouraged way to built application for MeeGo.

MeeGo Touch framework may interest you only if :

• You are building an application UI specifically for MeeGo handset UX.
• You want to adopt the MeeGo style (see MeeGo handset guidelines).
• You are interested in using MeeGo widgets and notifications, automatic screen rotation.
• You can cope with future change in API. MeeGo Touch framework is still evolving. For instance, part (or all) of it may be included in future version of Qt. Though you can be confident that MeeGo Touch will continue to exist and improve.

Also an other new way to code Qt apps exists: Qt Quick (QML and QtDeclarative). It is still very new, but it could be interesting to write fast a small UI.

How to install it ?

You can clone the git repositories in the source page and compile it (./configure, qmake, make install) or use the version included into MeeGo handset images.

Also it must be run into a MeeGo chroot environment (see Getting started with the MeeGo SDK for Linux (Original)) or a MeeGo test device (ARM/N900)