[Indic-computing-users] LINK: Base libraries, Indian fonts a stumbling block...

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

Base libraries, Indian fonts the stumbling block for language solutions: Qt

By Frederick Noronha
fred at bytesforall dot org

BANGALORE, Nov 28 (IANS): India is a 'key country' in Asia for the Oslo
(Norway) headquartered IT technology company Trolltech AS, which is known
for developing Qt -- a powerful software development tool.

"India represents today less than one per cent of Trolltech's total
revenues.  It is believed that this percentage may increase to 2-3%.  (Yet
India) will remain among the four most important countries in Asia (after
Japan, China and Korea)," Trolltech sales director Grim Steinar Gjonnes, who
visited India recently, told this correspondent in an interview. 

Trolltech's Qt products are widely used -- the company claims, in 45
countries -- for commercial software development. The Qt/Desktop products
are tools for professional software application across differing computer
operating systems -- Windows, GNU/Linux, Unix and Mac.

On the other hand, the Qt/Embedded products help software developers to make
tools and applications for devices using 'embedded' software, such as
Internet appliances, palmtop computers, and PDAs (personal digital
assistants).

Unusually, the C++ based Qt toolkit allows software application developers
to target their products for all major operating systems with a single
application source code. It has been termed a cross-platform tool, since it
is not restricted to one or the other computer operating systems. 

Qt is a C++ toolkit for application development. It lets application
developers target all major operating systems with a single application
source code.

Qt provides a platform-independent API to all central platform
functionality: GUI, database access, networking, file handling, etc. The Qt
library encapsulates the different APIs of different operating systems,
providing the application programmer with a single, common API for all
operating systems. The native C APIs are encapsulated in a set of
well-designed, fully object-oriented C++ classes.

Thus, Qt claims to "radically reduce" the time and resources needed to
target multiple platforms, since the job of porting is reduced to a simple
recompilation.

When using Qt, application developers can change or add target platform(s)
at any time during and after the development project, with minimal cost.
This radically reduces the risks related to choosing the wrong target
platform at the start of the project.

Qt also says that by eliminating multiple source trees, it eliminates the
problems and cost of maintaining and administering them. With Qt, only one
version of the application source code needs to be maintained. Furthermore,
the Qt library "insulates the application from changes in new versions of
the operating system or window system". This also reduces maintenance costs,
claims Trolltech.

Qt-based applications have the native look and feel of whatever platform
they run on.

There is no performance hit incurred by using Qt. Qt is not based on
operating system emulation or run-time interpretation. Qt-based applications
are native, compiled C++ applications on each platform. The Qt library
simply replaces Motif, MFC, etc. Qt-based applications run at least as fast
as applications written with those toolkits. The memory footprint is also
the same.

The Qt/Desktop product family consists of: Qt/Windows is designed for MS
Windows 95/98/Me, NT4, 2000 and XP. Qt/X11 is designed for Linux, Solaris,
HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, and many other Unix variants. And Qt/Mac is designed for
Apple Mac OS X.

Developers can use any or all of them to target any platform.

A non-commercial version of Qt/X11 is the de facto standard C++ toolkit for
GUI applications on Linux. The KDE desktop environment is based on Qt/X11.

Qt/Embedded is a version of Qt designed for resource-constrained embedded
systems. It provides full GUI functionality without requiring X11 or Motif
on the target system.

This, says Trolltech, substantially reduces the memory and CPU demands of
the embedded software.

Qt/Embedded provides "all the power" of the Qt/Desktop, but can be scaled
down by configuring out features not required by the system. "In this way,
the memory footprint of the embedded software can be further reduced,"
argues Trolltech.

Qt/Embedded is compatible with the desktop versions of Qt. Applications can
be ported between the desktop and the embedded systems by a simple
recompilation. Qt/Embedded is currently available for embedded Linux
systems.

Qtopia is a window environment and application suite designed for PDAs,
palmtop computers, internet appliances, and similar devices. It is fully
based on Qt/Embedded.

Qtopia includes a full set of Personal Information Management (PIM)
applications, like calendar, address book, to do-list, etc. Also available
are E-mail client, games, and configuration utilities.

Trolltech says it is "working on establishing strong and lasting
relationships with some technology partners in India", and it is seeing a
"steadily increasing inflow" of sales requests from India.

"We have identified India as a key country for us in Asia (together with
Japan, China and Korea), especially on the desktop side.  This was done
based on the solid inflow of sales requests, market potential and maturity,
quality and quantity of software engineers, and its position within the
international software industry," Gjonnes said.

Said Gjonnes: "We do have a lot of sales to India, but most of them rather
small.  An interesting story is probably Infomart's Kaii device (see for
example http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8619741565.html), in which we
have been little involved, except that it seems to be based on Qtopia."

Asked about the level of maturity Qt had attained in supporting non-English
language support, particularly in Indian languages, he said the Unicode
rendering in Qt is "very advanced", and includes full support for far eastern
languages and bi-directional languages like Hebrew and Arabic.  

But, Gjonnes said, the "only exception to this rule" is that support for
Indic scripts is "regrettably not yet up to the same level".  

"For Qt/X11, this is because the base libraries -- X11 and glibc -- still do
not provide much support for this.  For example, there is as yet no standard
encoding of Indian glyphs in X11, and no proper OpenType support," Gjonnes
added.

But, he said, Trolltech is "seeing that things are slowly improving in this
area, and after our upcoming Qt 3.1 release, we want to improve the
rendering of Indian languages in Qt".

He felt that Pango provides "only very rudimentary support" for Indian
languages. "Also, the last time we tested it, it had significant performance
problems.  What we want to do is to learn from the experiences the Pango
developers have had, and make a well performing solution that fits Qt's
conceptual structure better," Gjonnes added. 

Some techies in India suggest that  GTK and Qt have separate projects for
i18n (internationalisation of computing), but neither is seen as sufficient
from an Indian perspective. 

Gjonnes argued that "the problem" is really the lacking support in the base
libraries, as well as the lack of freely accessible Indian fonts. 

"What is really needed is good OpenType support in the FreeType libraries,
or another form of consensus on encoding of Indian glyphs.  On MS Windows
and Mac, the situation is much better, so it will be easier to make good
support in Qt/Windows and Qt/Mac," he argued. 

In terms of a potential market for Qt and Qtopia, Gjonnes said India had the
potential with companies, consumers and public sector organisations. This
included "schools and universities wanting to use GNU/Linux as an
alternative to Microsoft products".

Besides, he also saw potential for larger business opportunities on a
selective basis, especiallyfrom multi-nationals with whom Trolltech already
has a customer relationship, and doing larger IT projects in India.

"Certain vertical markets in which we already have a dominating position,
for example within oil and gas, animation and special effects, test and
measurement equipment, medical devices, electronic design automation,
automotive, and machine tools (also have a potential)," Gjonnes added.

The company was also looking at software development companies in India that
may develop into global players within their markets.  "Indeed, during my
stay in India I will visit a couple of such companies, and we are
continuously looking for other such companies," he said. 

Indian companies offering software development expertise to foreign
companies, and firms from here offering products and services in the
consumer electronics space (PDAs, web pads, smartphones) were also other
potential customers that Trolltech was looking at.

Gjonnes said that since September 2000, when Trolltech released Qt Free
Edition under the GPL license, there has been no more debates on the issue
of whether its proprietorial products could co-exist with the Free Software
world promoted by the GNU/Linux camp.

"That move meant that Qt/X11 was available as a truly Free/Open Source
product for Open Source development, while being available as a truly
commercial (and proprietorial) product for closed source development.  This
unique dual-licensing approach has made Trolltech into one of the very few
companies world wide that has commercial succeeds with Open Source
software," Gjonnes argued. 

Trolltech is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in Brisbane,
Australia, and Santa Clara, California. The company had total revenues of
approx. USD 4m in 2001, is expected to have revenues of approx. USD 8m in
2002.

Trolltech has some 75 employees, out of which approx 70% are engineers,
coming from 16 nationalities. See more details on www.trolltech.com

Its director of sales Grim Steinar Gjonnes (41) has worked as a scientist in
Norway and Canada in the fields of artificial intelligence, and as
management consultant in Sweden and Norway, apart from marketing manager
with the defence industry. He can be contacted via email
gj...@al... (ENDS)