Qt Creator tips for producing autobuilder source packages and skipping packaging for fast testing
Attila Csipa shows how the Qt SDK can be used to produce source tarballs which can be uploaded to the maemo.org autobuilder for delivery into Extras: I hear this question every now and then - how do you avoid going to the command line and/or scratchbox to generate your uploads for Extras? There are plenty of ways of doing it (simple and not-so-simple), with some guidance even, but here's the 'how I do it' post. He also describes how the Qt Creator nightly allows you to bypass the packaging stage, allowing for quicker deployment of applications to devices during development testing.
Maps & navigation in Qt on N900 using snapshots
Qt's cross-platform vision continues apace with the available of mapping and navigation functions available in the latest Qt Mobility snapshots: Regardless of the Qt and Qt Mobility versions provided by the Maemo 5 firmware, an evaluation build of the latest Qt and Qt Mobility is available from the Extras-devel repository. These libraries cannot be used for publishing software to Ovi (or promoted to Extras) nor do they come with any warranty, but are good for evaluating real-life performance and behavior. The components that are part of this initiative are labeled with experimental in their package names. They are installed in parallel to the Maemo 5 libraries, so they pose minimal danger to your existing install and do not affect stable software written for Maemo. Perhaps this will make it easier for someone to build an open source clone of Ovi Maps, whist addressing some of the functional papercuts in its Maemo version.
Work to get cell broadcast messages working on N900
Jonathan Wilson is working on figuring out how to add support for the cell broadcast messages. Unfortunately, that work is blocked by two issues: documentation for the dbus signals related to the messages, and header files for the connectivity UI's shared libraries: Cell Broadcast SMS is used for a few things, the most common use is for operators to display a cell tower name or ID or location (my operator displays usually a suburb name or sometimes the name of a large venue like an airport or train station or shopping center where it has a tower). Its also used to send various kinds of emergency messages for things like fires, floods, cyclones etc. My investigations have shown that the N900 cellular modem and telephony stack already support Cell Broadcast SMS. Hopefully Nokia will be able to help, although current events may lead one to believe they have other issues on their minds.
Qt's future
Daniel Kihlberg, Director of Qt Ecosystem, lays out his thoughts following Nokia's strategic shift: Wow, what a day… Nokia outlined its new platform strategy for smartphones, with Windows Phones as it primary smartphone platform in a proposed partnership with Microsoft… and Microsoft’s tools would be used for Nokia Windows Phone application development … and guess what, it has raised a lot of questions in the Qt community. He goes on to say that the MeeGo device will have Qt at its core, that the future sales target of 150-million Symbian devices is important and that Qt still has a future. The question still remains, however, as to what that future will look like if Symbian is a long-term dead-end.