[PyKDE] Sharp Zaurus support

[Konrad Hinsen]

Greg Fortune <lists at gregfortune.com> writes:

> I'm considering putting together a PyQt based app for the Sharp Zaurus and 
> would like to know what kind of success people have had.  Is the Zaurus 
> version of PyQt based on Qt 3.x or on one of the Qt 2.x series?  Is the 

The Zaurus has Qt/Embedded 2.3.2, with some limits on functionality.
PyQt being just a wrapper around Qt, it doesn't lift those
restrictions.

I don't know if there is a list of restrictions somewhere. Here are the
ones I discovered while porting code:

- The QSplitter object does not exist.

- QColor doesn't take string arguments, you have to specify a colour by
  RGB or use one of the predefined color objects.

Another incompatibility I discovered is that
QWidget.setBackgroundColor has no effect, at least for a "plain"
widget. You have to paint the background yourself.

All these are limitations due to Qt, so they apply no matter what
tools you use for Zaurus programming. I haven't run into anything
limitation due to Python or PyQt yet. It's rather the opposite: it is
much easier to work with Python on the Zaurus as you can modify the
code right on the Zaurus without having to worry about compilation. In
fact, I developed substantial parts of code on the train. And speed is
perfectly sufficient if you don't do number crunching.

In summary, Python+PyQt is the best handheld programming system I have
seen until now. Of course, as a longtime Python fan I might be biased ;-)

Konrad.