tHeBloG

OpenGL 3.1 was released few days ago, and after the OpenGL 3.0 release fiasco, there are good news: OpenGL is not dead! This 3.1 release is getting close to what has been waited for long time and what was promised already in SIGGRAPH 2007 OpenGL BOF, offering new beginning for OpenGL in modern programmable GPUs without huge fixed API. Backwards compatibility is still hanging around with "GL_ARB_compatibility" but the future for clean cross-platform 3D API looks now much brighter than few months ago! Go on and download latest OpenGL 3.1 and GLSL 1.4 specifications from OpenGL registry !

The Qt widget contest results have been announced and although segway slipped away this time, we got our 15s of fame with AnalogPad! But what I want to share here is the story behind our entry: Most importantly: Although only my name is mentioned there, it was full teamwork with my brother Kim "The Webkit" Grönholm! All started when I got backflash about the competition due after christmas and decided to hack 5-way analog navigator I designed and implemented the thing for 2 evenings, it started to look OK but behaved badly... Kimi offered to join the fun, although he happened to be in Korea(!) at the same time So last 3 days before the due, I spent my evenings with this, sent sources to Kimi and received fresh code for next evening I implemented mostly features, Kimi fixed them to work nicely and cleaned the code. Time difference between Finland and Korea didn't matter, it just added extra coolness into this co-operation as we worked kinda in two shifts! And the rest is ...

Here is our teamwork results for Qt Software " Pimp My Widgets " Developer Contest: Hacking was fun as always! Telling more about this later, but now: Happy New Year for you all!!!

Realized last week that what I need (or want, luckily those match quite nicely these days) to do is a virtual keyboard prototype based on Qt... Got the basic UI in there during the weekend, so what we have now: Works also in N810 but the performance is lacking, it's not totally fluid. Plans: - Have to figure out proper layout(s), wouldn't want to copy directly e.g. from iPhone or N810 - Support gestures and other usability tricks - After this, make more eye candy, animations etc. Not too much, but to help usability - Supporting word prediction and hit prediction is totally doable but would need more AI & grammar database integration, so not right now for this UI testing Anyway: If you got good layout & feature ideas, please share!

I was in Brisbane this week, meeting Tro..Nokia Qt / Qt Extended developers. Weather was kinda variable: Tuesday morning started as very nice and sunny, but before evening it was raining and thundering heavily... Not that there would have been time to enjoy fresh air anyway, we spent it pretty efficiently in office. Personal outcome of the trip was: Qt (Extended) 4.5 will rock! (Note: first technology preview was just released ) Future Qt versions will rock even more ;-) Special thanks goes to Aaron, for good discussions and for having similar UI thoughts as yours truly. Hopefully there is more time to spend next time!

During the weekend I tested briefly QEdje 0.3.0, here are my thoughts: QZion canvas which is used for graphics rendering in QEdje has two implementations: QPainter based and QGraphicsView based, former being currently faster in embedded environments lacking FPU power. QZion API is still very light, containing basic canvas objects (rectangle, image, text) with under 2kLOC / implementation. QEdje is the real beef, containing parser for Edje theme files. What I like about Edje format is that it's not based on XML and it still gets compiled into binary mode when deploying, which should minimize the theming performance hit. I tested now only with provided samples, have to check how QEdje handles more complicated Edje themes. Thinking why Edje, Evas, E17 etc. haven't become more popular, is the reason technical, just (lack of) community or what? My ideas for QEdje developers would be to concentrate more on QGraphicsView backend as it offers more features and should get nice boost w...

...bit late here, but summing up visually what I really learned during the Maemo summit trip. Watch out, there are bears also in Berlin! Although they seemed a bit more friendly and colorful than the ones living in our forests. If (when) aliens attack, c-base is the place to go to locate suitable guns. GYR1 is reserved for me! There are actually beer (ok, "beer") that I can drink!! Shopping and eating should be handled in public side of Berlin airport, as opposite to Helsinki where most of the shops appear after checking in. Doing this prevents situations where all you eat whole day is bread-based... Thanks to everybody attending and especially the ones who helped to organize the event!