Nokia introduces the Qt roadmap

At the Qt Developer Days in Munich, Germany, Sebastian Nyström (VP Application and Service Frameworks) and Lars Knoll (Qt's R&D Director), outlined the future development of Qt, the open source GUI framework. The feature most requested by customers is more performance and this is now a primary focus of development. With the in development Qt Scene Graph, the plan is to accelerate Qt by reducing the complexity of the graphics rendering pipeline from three stages to one, making full use of GPU acceleration where it is available. Another project, Lighthouse, offers similar hardware acceleration for developers who are creating embedded devices.

Better modularisation is also on the agenda. For example, as the QtWebkit component for rendering HTML is seeing rapid enhancement, the developers want to be able to easily update that component without updating the entire framework. Another focus of the development work is the full integration of gestures and tactile feedback into the Qt framework.

A heavy emphasis during the conference was placed on using Qt Quick which uses the declarative programmable JavaScript styled language QML (Qt Meta-Object Language), to create Qt applications. Knoll announced that the company plans to integrate QML creation in the Qt Creator IDE, and is working on a Qt Observer tool which allows for interactive debugging connections to be established from Creator (or other tools) to running applications on the desktop or device.

The most important platforms for Nokia, Symbian and Meego, will see an increase in company investment. Qt's traditional platforms, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and embedded Linux remain important to Nokia, but other Unix systems will see a reduction in investment. This position was reinforced by Nokia's new CTO, Rich Green, at a press conference on the Qt strategy. The company will concentrate equally on the development of Symbian and MeeGo. Although there were many Nokia N8's, the latest Symbian based phone from the company, present at the conference, there was only one MeeGo based device on show and that was the WeTab which does not use MeeGo's user interface. Green would not be drawn on the availability of a first MeeGo device from Nokia.

(djwm)