In-Depth With Qt 4.4

QtPi writes "Trolltech has announced the availability of Qt 4.4, the cross-platform software development framework. Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the release, which include an integrated WebKit-based HTML rendering engine, the new Phonon multimedia framework, support for Windows CE, and significant improvements to the QGraphicsView system. 'Qt 4.4 brings a lot of rich new capabilities to the toolkit that are sure to please open source and commercial software developers. It sounds like Trolltech already has some nice plans for Qt 4.5, and we will hopefully get to hear more about the long-term roadmap after Nokia completes its acquisition.'"

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[PitaBred]

libqt-mt is about 10MB on my system. That doesn't seem too ungainly, not to mention QT4 has made large strides into componentizing the library so it's not all just one huge library to load, you can load only the parts you want.

Re:Qt still has a point?

[PitaBred]

...right. Go look up what each of those libraries provides, and then post back when you've got a clue. Qt is much more portable, and provides a lot more for you than GTK or WxWidgets does. Qt ain't just a widget library.

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[Enleth]

While you are technically right on those issures, I'd dare to say they're, well, non-issues compared to what Qt offers, save for the Mac version ugliness.

Frankly, I don't see any reasonable, sincere and unbiased way of arguing that a few megabytes more is enough to dismiss a toolkit completely.

As for the Windows development problem, Visual Studio 2008 which is hailed even on Slashdot as the best (or at least one of the best) Windows IDE out there supports C++ just as well as other languages. So what did you actually mean by "moving away"?

And, actually, even the point about Qt being ugly on Mac, while true, is pretty meaningless, as the only other toolkit (AFAIR - please correct me if that's not the case anymore) that has native Mac OS X support is wxWindows and it's about as ugly there.

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[Kjella]

On Linux the libraries are now so damn big that non-KDE users wont install them.

I take it you run no Java apps at all then? One of those suck down way more than Qt does. Plus it's modular so you can take your pick, but if you want a core + ui + network + sql + xml + svg + unit test + opengl framework yeah it adds up. I think you get a lot more than GTK does though. And seriously, even with all of them you're talking 10-15MB in a world where 4GB DDR2 costs 60-65$.

On Windows the best development tools are moving away from C++.

We'll see, C++ certainly isn't going away fast. The tools are good and there's plenty developers so I wouldn't worry about starting a C++ project. DotNET seem to be going through pretty many and large revisions and I understand not all is happy in the land of managed code. I think C++/Qt has just as durable a life as C#/.NET.

On Mac it's just plain ugly.

Wouldn't know, don't have one. Worse than other cross-platform tools as it seems to be Mac users are never happy with anything not native Mac?

I'm sure the embedded developers are loving it though.

Probably.

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[pherthyl]

>> On Linux the libraries are now so damn big that non-KDE users wont install them.

That's ridiculous. Only the hardcore GTK purists won't install qt libs. No one else will ever know or care. You can never please those fanatics. If you use GTK you will have the same problem with hardcore Qt purists. You can safely ignore those idiots.

>> On Windows the best development tools are moving away from C++.

As others have mentioned, that's not the case at all. Visual Studio has excellent C++ support in its latest versions, and there are lots of decent free alternatives (Eclipse CDT, dedicated stuff like QDevelop).

>> On Mac it's just plain ugly.

I can't say much about that since I don't use a mac, but some other people have mentioned that they didn't even notice the difference on some Qt using apps. Once again I doubt it's an issue for anyone except the hardcore purists.

And what's the alternative? Write a custom UI for each platform? Maybe if you have resources to burn, but these days it's just a huge waste.

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[Kjella]

It's a most troubling prospect you bring up there, if only there was a way that several applications could share the same library. Maybe we could create some sort of package system, where you download the library just once from something we could call a repository. Then we could have a package manager to sort this out, so that you could have tiny 100kb apps using a 10MB library. Oh, a man can dream...

Seriously though, it might have been a semi-valid point on Windows but on Linux where he used it it's complete nonsense.

Trolls are great :)

[alberthier]

The only drawbacks on Qt I see in the comments here is that the lib is too fat or that C++ is dead. But let's concentrate on What Qt provides:

A API that covers the purpose of glib + gobject + gio + atk + pango + cairo + gtk + gstreamer + gecko + libxml2 + goocanvas + internationalization + portability accross Unices, Mac and Windows This is splitted in several modules Core, Xml, Network, Gui, Phonon, Webkit And the main point is that you have all that in the same API with the same object design. If you never coded in Qt, try it before saying it sucks, you will see how straitforward everything is.

Signals/Slots in really a fantastic feature and massively used in Qt

Java / .NET descided like Trolltech that C++ was too complicated. Sun created the java language, MS the C#, Trolltech just decided to limit themselves to a subset of C++ and add some extensions via macros (and a precompiler which generates the boilerplates) but globally the aproach is similar.

I use Qt every day and I really don't think I could be as productive with WxWidgets or GTK. Maybe GTK / Vala will be the future real competitor to Qt.

Re:Excellent

[Kjella]

I disagree with the idea that throwing another player into the game is going to do anything to help the user.

Actually, they're throwing one out - the arTs sound server. Phonon is not a multimedia framework, it has no intention of implementing anything. It makes life easier for application developers, which honestly shouldn't care more about which media backend is in use than what scheduling algorithm the kernel uses.

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[Enleth]

If your app risks being dismissed by the user for such reasons, you have some serious problems than just the toolkit you are using. Like, well, the app being nothing of particular value usefulness compared to the alternatives or something along these lines.

Re:I stopped caring about Qt

[Otter]

Blah, if people won't install your app for any of these reasons then they are important.

No Windows user is going to not use your app because C++ is out of fashion on that platform. Only the dumbest Linux users would do something like that.

Re:Why does Qt get such kudos?

[croftj]

Because MSDN only wishes they could touch Qt in ease of programming. C++ compared to Java (and I have to assume it's close cousin C#) is hands down the better choice, with Qt you get the cross platform, garbage collection (not 100% but I have less memory leaks with my Qt programs than with my Java programs) and so much more.

  Let's see do a decent GUI or even server using MSDN which will go cross platform!

  Speaking of licensing fees, just how many developers do you have? Is it safe to assume that MS sells one copy of MSDN and lets all of the developers in your company use it? I doubt that! We spend roughly 1700 per year for one developer doing MS/X11 I can make as many applications with it as I like (I'm good, I can write a lot of apps).

  So in the end, the Trolls get the Kudos because they earned them!

Re:Why does Qt get such kudos?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does Qt get such kudos?

I'm not knocking Qt's technical merits. I'm sure its great. We have customers telling us they use Qt and its great etc. No problem with that.

Well I hate to state the obvious, but that is why it gets such kudos.

I find time after time people holding up Qt as wonderful, often in open source circles

But, per application, recurring per year, its expensive

Not for people in open source circles.

So why does Qt get such veneration when the value for money is so poor compared to the industry pariah (sic), Microsoft

Let's see. TrollTech takes money from proprietary software developers, and uses it to fund excellent quality GPL libraries. Microsoft takes money from proprietary software developers, and uses it to fund an average set of libraries that are closed-source. Amazingly, open-source developers prefer the company that actually helps open-source software. Imagine that!

Re:Why does Qt get such kudos?

[justaguylikeme]

Trolltech has never licensed Qt per application. It's per developer seat per year. At our company we use Qt for most major development we do. The ease of use, flexibility, outstanding documentation, cross-platform capabilities, and excellent technical support we receive for the price makes it definitely worth the while. We couldn't develop nearly as much as quickly if we didn't have Qt. We've been using it since version 1.2, and have watched the toolkit mature over the last decade. We're a relatively small shop (5 developers) that has to turn around products quickly across a wide array of platforms. For the things Qt does, we haven't found anything that comes close to doing it better or more simply. The up-front cost is an easy sell to our management team, who are thrilled with our performance.

Re:Trolls are great :)

[master_p]

The Qt library is the C++ SDK that the C++ language is missing. I would pay to see the C++ Standards Committee adopt it as the standard C++ toolkit. Now if only C++ got real garbage collection and lambda functions (two features that are really necessary for high end development)...

Re:Widgets in QGraphicsView look *really* promisin

[Per Wigren]

Yes, but this time it's implemented in something that people will actually use, and it's Open Source and cross platform.

Re:Trolls are great :)

[Ed Avis]

OTOH, I would pay to see Troll Tech adopt the standard C++ library in Qt, rather than reinventing their own strings, vectors, lists and so on.

Re:Trolls are great :)

[master_p]

The Qt's container APIs are richer than the STL.

Re:Trolls are great :)

[a.ameri]

Am I the only one who is fascinated by the irony that nowadays, the main selling point of the toolkit that was developed first and foremost as an open source equivalent to Qt, is that it can be used to develop closed source applications?

I wonder how the open source purists who deplored Qt when it was clsoed source and issued jihad against the KDE community and the likes of SuSE and Mandrake for bringing closed source creep into the open source world, feel about the fact that their beloved toolkit is licensed under the "lesser" of the GPL lincences, while Qt is now GPL through and through.

The irony of history...