Mobile components and convergence

[Sandro Andrade]

Hi there,

I've been playing with Qt on Android for some weeks, trying to come up
with some nice approach to implement Minuet for Android/iOS. I'd like
to bring some topics I've been wondering for discussion here:

* UI/UX visual language/metaphors: FWIK, we have four possible paths
to follow regarding that:

1) QML Quick Controls 1
2) QML Quick Controls 2 (with Material Design, Universal Design, and Default)
3) qml-material (https://github.com/papyros/qml-material)
4) Kirigami (https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kirigami.git)

I think all of those have its strenghts and shortcomings but it'd be
useful if we start discussing some guidelines regarding that. Using
Kirigami would be obviously our first choice since we'd be promoting
our own visual language. QML Quick Controls 2 has a technical preview
in Qt 5.6 with an initial implementation of Material Design, Universal
Design and a "default" style for QML controls. Both Kirigami and QML
Quick Controls 2 are in a very early stage though, I'm unsure if they
are ready for use in real complex mobile applications.

OTOH, qml-material looks great but it's been barely maintained. I
don't know if replacing a given UX visual language by another one is
as simple as changing the QML style adopted or if they define
different vocabulary which, in turn, would end up with the need of
changing the source code and the particular UML elements adopted. At
least in QML Quick Controls 2, we can easily choose between Material
Design, Universal Design, and the Default Design requiring only an app
restart. Having a standardized vocabulary with the possibility of
implementing UX visual languages as simple styles would be the perfect
scenario.

* KF5-based vs Qt-based: I haven't tried to build KF5 on Android yet,
but I'd like to discuss to which extent they're buildable in Android
and actually bring some quite useful functionality. Has anyone
successfully built KF5 on Android? At the minimal, level 1 frameworks
shouldn't present any issue apart from setting up cmake environment?

* Release and Deployment: has anyone tried to deploy qt apps with
ministro service? If we're going to have a set of qt-based
applications for Android, the bundled deployment option doesn't seem
viable. We have a store in Google App Store for KDE applications
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=KDE%20Community&hl=pt_BR),
currently providing mobile versions of KAlgebra, KDE Connect, and
Behaim Globe (marble-based?). Also, we have the recent aquisition of
OCS by BlueSystems.

Thoughts?
--
Sandro