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List:       kde-freeqt
Subject:    [freeqt] Greetings!
From:       Matt Heck <mheck () www ! surveyorcorp ! com>
Date:       1999-02-16 23:37:20
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Hello, Team Harmony!

   My name is Matt Heck, and I'm interested in joining your development
effort.  I work for Surveyor Corporation (www.surveyorcorp.com), which
basically does some intelligent sensor processing work, as well as
building some computer-controlled pan/tilt units for cameras, sensors,
etc.

   Presently, about 90-95% of our core source base is cross-platform,
working under both Linux (our preferred platform) and Win32 (95, 98, NT).
This has been an interesting experience, due to the differrences in
networking APIs and multithreading (we rely heavily on a basic POSIX
multithreading interface for UNIX, and the Win32 interface also works
with our API).

   The remaining problem we face is not so trivial: cross-platform GUI
development.  Our initial research lead us to believe that the Qt toolkit
was probably the most appropriate library to use.  However, the
modification limitations in that toolkit-- as well as the lack of open
source for a Windows implementation-- make us a little leery of it.

   We are strong supporters of the open source concept, as we need to
release example applications for developers to learn how to control our
hardware products with, and obviously welcome contributions.  As such, it
is only appropriate for us to consider any open source efforts, and to
commit development resources to aid completion of such an effort, if it
seems likely to solve our problem.  An open source library compatible with
the Qt API would be excellent-- Harmony, at least in design, appeared to
go one step further with better multithreading support.  Our applications
rely heavily on solid multithreading.

   To determine what sort of resources we can commit, we need to have a
very accurate understanding of the current state of the project and any
issues or concerns presently threatening its continued progress.  We went
looking at the status page at http://harmony.ruhr.de/status.html, but it
seems to be seriously out of date.

   I was not able to come up with complete mail archives, but looking
through what I was able to find seems to indicate the following:

   * The opinion on Qt's new license is split
   * Harmony may be getting split into several development efforts
   * There has apparrently been some concern about possible legal action
     against the project for reasons I was not able to determine
   * At least one major contributor has left the project

   Could the members please shed some light on these issues?  Our intent
would be to continue (or start if not yet begun) an L/GPL-compliant Win32
implementation of Harmony, with the intent of enabling developers to use
open source tools for cross-platform GUI development.

   I personally have strong experience with the Win32 API (and a bottle of
Pepto Bismol next to the docs) as well as the DirectX high-performance
graphics system (which, for full-motion video display, should be used
whenever possible instead of GDI).  I also have strong experience with
Linux development.  I have also worked on several Motif based
applications, although I am in general a little rusty on X-Windows.

   I'm looking forward to learning more about the present state and
intentions of the Harmony project.

   Thank you,
      Matt Heck
      Development Lead, AKASHA
      Surveyor Corporation
      http://www.surveyorcorp.com

____________________
Matt Heck
Surveyor Corporation

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