Nokia acquires Trolltech, what it means for user and developers.

The news is rife with Microsoft's acquisition attempt of Yahoo!, probably the biggest acquisition bid of all times. While this is huge news in itself, it has dwarfed an equally important but less glamorous deal of Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech. For the uninitiated it is the company behind Qt, an open source and multi-platform UI designer. Though primarily for Desktop application development, Qt also has a smart-phone / PDA cousin called Qtopia which runs on Linux based smart-phones.

So, why would Nokia be interested in Qt all of a sudden. Is Nokia finally ready to adopt Linux as a standard operating system for its devices ? I don't think so. Nokia might have been thinking of Linux for its devices but I do not think they would phase-out or even start phasing out Symbian platform sometime soon.

I think the reason behind this is that they plan on providing a standard UI designer to the already discussed Open C platform. So, the developers would be able to port existing open source unix/linux based applications to Symbian in totality, unlike Open C, which allows porting only the business logic and requires Symbain C++ module to provide even the basic UI.

In addition, this would also give developers an alternative to the existing Symbian C++ development environment, which is not exactly the easiest platform to develop in. And in the long term, it would not only provide loads of applications ported from Linux to Symbian but an army of open source developers.

Plenty of applications being available for its devices has always been the USP for Symbian and Nokia phones, but with open source platforms such as Android and OpenMoko ready to hit the market very soon, this may not continue to be the case. Nokia knows it has to inevitably move towards open source. In fact, Nokia has already shown cautious enthusiasm towards open source. Nokia's standard browser is based on Webkit, the open source browser engine.

So, what can we expect to see in the future. Most definitely a lot of great open source application running your Nokia S60 3rd edition mobile phones. Personally, I would be really interested in porting VLC to Symbian S60, now that VLC has announced that from 0.9.0 build onwards the UI would be QT4 based. So, its a very good news for Nokia phone users.

My personal advice to Nokia developers, starting looking at Qt4. You might find yourself using it for S60 development sooner than you expect.

Hello World !! Open C Style

As I promised in my last post. I am posting a video that would help anyone interested in getting started on the Open C platform. This video illustrates how to write a Hello World application on using the Open C platform.

But before that, you would have to set-up the environment. To do that, first of all install the latest version of Carbide.C++. You can get the free express version at forum nokia. You would then require the S60 Platform SDK for Series 60, 3rd edition or higher. In addition you would require the Open C SDK. Once you download and install these you would ready to write your code in Open C.

This video would show you how-to.

It is even easier to actually port an existing project using open C. Instead of creating a main.c file as in the video, you can directly copy your source files from the windows explorer and paste them in the Navigator window of Eclipse in the Carbide C++ as shown in the video.

EDIT: There seemed to be a problem with the video, so I am trying to resolve that. Till then and even otherwise you can download the video here.

P.I.P.S. and Open C

I love the C language. I truely do. Its like the Led Zeppelin among all the languages. Knowing C automatically makes you like the coolest cyber-punk around. Its like the light-saber of the cyber world. Having it makes you the Darth-Vader of the cyber-wars.

But alas, you cannot use C to program the mobile phones. It has never been the choice of the mobile honchos who somehow were always seduced by more a more bigger language. J2ME (ah yuck!!), C++ (Symbian, oh man !! thats one tough platform to master), Java (Google's Android), C#( Windows Mobile). So, unless you want to work on a hobbyist platform (like OpenMoko), the C developers are left out in cold for writing softwares for cell-phones.

Too bad. Huh ? But not now. At the start of this year, Symbian introduced what is known as P.I.P.S. ("PIPS is POSIX for Symbian", get it ? No ? Me neither, anyways, read on). So PIPS is basically Unix's POSIX libraries ported to Symbian OS). POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface and is roughly a set of IEEE standardized APIs for Unix like operating systems.

In sync with this Nokia, lauched what they termed as Open C. Its basically the PIPS with many more libraries supported other than PIPS. Open C basically aims at allowing developing houses to port existing (especially open-source) applications to Symbian systems. So it basically boils down to reusing your desktop code for Symbian smart-phones.

However, I think Open C gives the developers a unique opportunity to develop applications for Symbian using the age-old C language. I think its pretty cool. In some ways its a first of its kind opportunity for developers like me who swear by the C language on Unix systems.

However, there is a down side to this technology. Developers can not, as yet, write the GUI of the application in Open C. The C functions written by you have to called by an application written in Symbian C++. Now, Symbian C++ is a devil of a language. It has one of the deepest learning curves of all the technologies I have worked on. I am pretty sure that Symbian or Nokia would never allow the GUI to be written in C for their aim of allowing to port existing open source apps to Symbian is met by Open C. So I am not hopeful.

BUT, there is something in my mind which I would post in the next few posts. Till then enjoy exploring Open C. If nothing else, its at least a start.

I would post an easy-to-follow, how-to video for Open C very soon. Keep your eyes open.