Re: [Opie] strategic direction

Russell Nelson wrote:

> I think the strategic direction for Familiar, Familiar-GPE, and
> Familiar-Opie should be that everything should run over X, and that
> Familiar installs X by default. The base distribution should have a

The idea of unification of the GUIs naturally has some advantages.
However I don't share the opinion that this unification is a good idea.

From the technical point of view, this is possible, no doubts, and we already
have the capabilities to run OPIE under X.

The question is: Is this efficient ? From a users point of view, a PDA has to
be small, efficient, resource savy and easy to use.
Qt/E and OPIE already provided this. Changing now the basic architecture by
putting the X layer between Qt/E and the framebuffer would also change the
primary focus- from the standpoint of day-by-day usability this layer is
absolutly unnecessary and drastically increases resource usage- each 100k
block still counts in.

X is great to play with, it raises the "cool device" factor and some people
have found a real good use for it on a PDA- however most people use their
personal device for things where X is of no interest at all- personal
organisation and planning.

Oliver

-- 
_____________________________________________
Oliver Fels
Feed manager/Coordination
Project OPIE- the Open Palmtop Integrated Environment
http://opie.handhelds.org | http://www.opie.info (german)
IRC: irc.freenode.net #opie #opie.de