Postings in May 2011
Writing QML-based input methods for Maliit
This week I pushed a simple QML-based virtual keyboard to our MeeGo Keyboard repository. It's functional, but don't expect too much. This functionality will most likely never arrive in MeeGo 1.2, sorry folks.
Getting Started
Let's continue with the good parts instead: The required C++ code was kept to an absolute minimum and in fact it's only needed to wrap the QML resources into a Qt/C++ plugin that can be loaded by our framework. If you want to write your own QML-based input method plugin for Maliit, then this is the required interface:
class MyQmlBasedInputMethodPlugin
: public QObject, public MInputMethodQuickPlugin
{
...
Suspend broken for X200 and X201 Thinkpad in Natty
In case you wonder why suspend is broken for you after upgrading to Natty: Good chances tpm_tis is bugging you. Quite some hits when searching in Launchpad. Seems LP#770272 lists a good workaround. Have to admit I did not try it. Not knowning what benefit a TPM gives me I just blacklisted the kernel module:
echo ...
Qt Contributors' Summit
.
A bit odd for something with my background? Does that mean I am leaving the GNOME universe?
No. It just happens in Berlin, and I've just spent lots of time on letting QtContacts use some awesome GNOME technology (tracker). On the summit I'll try to convince some Qt core guys, that maybe UTF-8 ...
GFX performance pattern
In case you struggle with your GFX performance: Michael just nicely wrote down a receipe to dramatically boost performance in non-trivial canvas based applications. Old story for some, hot stuff for others.
Painting Strategy in MeeGo's Virtual Keyboard
I've never been happy with the conclusion in the influential blog post "Qt Graphics and Performance — The Cost of Convenience" by Gunnar Sletta: If you want performance, downgrade QGraphicsView to a mere canvas with a single QGraphicsItem. It defeats the whole purpose of decomposing the problem into many small QGraphicsItems and is therefore entirely counter-intuitive. One might be quick to ask what Qt Graphics View is good for (and one might find the answer here), but instead I would like to present an alternate solution to Gunnar's which reaches the same performance but embraces the ...
