Re: A sad state of affairs

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Re: A sad state of affairs
by Leo S on Saturday 07/Jul/2007, @09:24

>> wx is probably the best choice for those coming from Windows with an already
>> done piece of software they want to port to other systems, as wx is
>> the "most native" there.</blockquote>

Interstingly enough, a lot of companies like to make a separate interface for each platform. Like Skype uses Qt on Linux, but the Windows interface is made in Delphi, and the Mac interface with Cocoa. Instead of saving a bunch of work by making one Qt interface, they reinvented the wheel 3 times.

Similarly with Opera, they only use Qt on Linux (although they have their own UI toolkit that does most of the drawing on the major platforms (what is it about Norwegians and making toolkits? :)).

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Official News
·   Also by Leo S
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Re: A sad state of affairs
by Kevin Krammer on Monday 09/Jul/2007, @03:39

> Interstingly enough, a lot of companies like to make a separate interface for each platform

This is usually the result of considering too late to also support other platforms.

When a company wants to create a multiplatform product by design, they have a real incentive to share as much code as possible (or the other way around to have as few pieces of platform specific code as possible).

But often companies decide at a latter point to actually support other platforms, which mean they already have considerably large amounts of platform specific code.

In the long run the first model is obviously superior, since the company at most needs one or two experts per platform and can have the majority of development work spread across all their developers.

Companies which are aware of this sometimes choose multiplatform technology like Qt even if they are now just aiming at a single platform product, just in case there is enough demand on different platforms later on.

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