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We saw many threads on the Ubuntu User Interface Toolkit that will be available for the Ubuntu Phone application development (see this thread for example). But there seems to be no information about other really important parts of the SDK.

Furthermore it's really hard to continuative information using other information channels. The offical #ubuntu-phone channel at freenode.net is not yet frequently used, developer.ubuntu.com just targets the UI part of the SDK and the mailinglist of the ubuntu-phone group at launchpad.net also offers just insufficient information.

I would like to know something about the following topics.

Data

Which possibilities will I have to store data? What is the standard database used for development (sqlite for example)? How could I store preferences? Will there be a Preference-API like the one of Android? What's about global Interfaces to access phone data like contacts, calls, sms and calendars.

Internal Communication

What sort of internal communication could we expect? How could we use foreign and system applications to send emails or open websites ...? Is there a broadcast service to be responsive to system events like a completed bootup, an incoming sms or a request to start any app that could handle some kind of data? Also see this question regarding this topic.

Sensors

What's about sensor API's? Which possiblities will I have to interface with the camera(s), acceleration, orientation, distance or GPS sensors?

Environment

An API to access information regarding the phone environment will certainly be there, but what will it be capable of? How would I be able to access the OS version, the screen resolution, the available sensors, the phone leds and the filesystem?

Threading

Will there be special implementations that simplify the usage of threads? How could I solve problems of concurrency and what kind of intercommunication will be available?

Testing

Testing is a important part of application development but I didn't see any information about unit testing, a mocking framework or the emulator, which was mentioned in some threads. Will the emulator be capable of sensor emulation, will there be a plugin to integrate the testing framework and the emulator into qtcreator?

Many questions but I hope that some of the developers will see this thread and answer some of them.

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    Ubuntu sdk is still under developement, So we can't answer these question now, BTW if you want contact devs, use their mailing list
    – Tachyons
    Feb 7, 2013 at 14:36
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    That is a lot of questions wrapped into one, this will be incredibly difficult to answer. In the FAQ "Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much."
    – Mateo
    Feb 7, 2013 at 14:56
  • Yeah this are many questions, but I hoped to find more references not targeting the Ubuntu User Interface Toolkit. And yes the sdk is still under developement, but a first version should be reasled at the end of this month and there is no information about the system architecture, the hardware APIs and the internal communication yet. I hoped to get some hints or an extended reference. How do the core developers think to motivate other developers to support them if there is no information they could base their decision upon.
    – Phidelux
    Feb 7, 2013 at 15:29
  • Unfortunately an answer now it's speculative and the site does not deal with speculative answers, if they'll be releasing the SDK at the end of the month, you can ask another question or flag this for reopening then. Feb 7, 2013 at 19:41
  • Answers do not have to be speculative, because the developers of ubuntu phone asked at their IRC channel #ubuntu-mobile to use www.askubuntu.com/questions/tagged/mobile. So I hoped to get some answers here. Furthermore a first version of the SDK will be released this month so I hope they will present more than just another UI Framework.
    – Phidelux
    Feb 7, 2013 at 20:06

1 Answer 1

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I think the Qt documentation answers a lot of questions.

For HTML5 apps there are also many drafted APIs concerning these aspects.

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    Thanks for this hints! They do not answer all my questions, but you mentioned some points I could start further reading.
    – Phidelux
    Feb 7, 2013 at 20:02

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