Further PySide & QML tutorials

Thomas Perl has continued his exploration of Qt, Python and QML by documenting his experiences on the developer.qt.nokia.com wiki in a series of tutorials. Writing about them, Thomas said, To get myself accustomed to PySide UI development using Qt Quick (aka QML) and to check out what works already and what does not, I've experimented with creating some common elements that I'd use in an application (i.e. a QML version of gPodder - a blingy demo already exists) and decided to share my experiences and results as tutorials. The tutorials cover, amongst other things: creating a selectable list of Python objects in QML; using QtWebKit and QML with PySide; updating QML content from Python threads; using Qt Quick Colibri in PySide and using Qt Mobility sensors and QML from PySide.

developer.meego.com goes live

Work has been progressing on a new developer-central for MeeGo to host all of the relevant information and tools for developers toto program for MeeGo. developer.meego.com has gone live in beta to open it up to public feedback and improvement: The goal of this beta is to improve the functionality of the site, and to ramp-up content so that it meets developer needs. There are some elements missing (a FAQ for example). However, rather than keeping this under wraps we have decided to release the site for comment. As the site is currently in Beta, it is not official; so we have put it behind a user name/password ("meego"/"developer") to avoid search engine indexing. Additionally, there are some instructions on the main page about feedback etc. ("This site is beta" links to the respective wiki page). Finally, we plan to alter the look&feel of the site to make it closer to the www.meego.com look&feel - more news about this later. Ronan Mac Laverty, Nokia's Developer Advocate (effectively a developer-focused complement to Quim Gil) has been spearheading the improvement of Nokia and MeeGo's developer story. A major component of this begins falling into place with the deployment of developer.meego.com.

The beta site is currently password protected to prevent being picked up by search engines until it's ready.

Kicking off the MeeGo-Python project

Python has long been a core part of the Maemo developer story (despite never having garnered official support) thanks to it's lower barrier to entry compared with C. Python's MeeGo story still isn't entirely clear, but a Python group has now been formed to help write it: I'd like to announce the kick-off of the MeeGo-Python project by inviting interested parties to join the MeeGo-Python mailing list and/or to the #meego-python IRC channel at FreeNode. The scope of the project is to create a vigorous Python developer community and provide a top-quality Python programming environment for MeeGo. The practical emphasis is on PySide: Python for Qt project and its Qt, QML, and MeeGo API bindings, although work and discussion on other Python APIs are welcomed as well. This should provide an immediate cross-platform advantage to the PySide applications being written for Maemo.

dbuscron: cron-like daemon to launch actions on DBus events

A new daemon to provide cron-like control of DBus events called dbuscron is being developed by "kstep".

Joerg Reisenweber pointed out the similarities with the already existing (and, he contends, better named) "dbus-scripts" by Graham Cobb which allows the execution of arbitrary commands on DBus-events matching a filter expression.

Super Mario equivalent knocked up in 7 QML files and no C++

In a rather impressive demonstration of the power of Qt Quick, a web developer has managed to put together a Super Mario clone in 4 days. Here’s a game I made with pure QML (no C++), costs around 4 days. QML is very easy to learn, I was a web developer and had no experience whatsoever with QML or Qt, but made this game while I learn the languge. Very easy and pleasant. The video is a bit laggy because of the recording software, the game itself runs smoothly. PS: The game has a small bug of detecting platform, you will see in the video. Controls by left, right, z key. Not counting graphics and audio it’s 7 QML files which sums up around 12KB. Although QML certainly isn't suitable for all cases, the low barrier-to-development and ease of prototyping it provides opens things up for a wide variety and skill range of developers.