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Trolltech Spills Beans On Qt 3.0
Gord.ca writes: "Linuxprogramming has
a
preview of Qt 3.0. New goodies include database integration,
multiple monitor, 64-bit support, their own component model an improved Qt Designer & international text display. Doesn't seem to be any reference to 3.0 on the Trolltech website, nor guestimates of release date." Update: 04/09 11:18 PM by T : Here's something on the Trolltech site about the new release -- sounds nice.
The idea that 'all those concepts' can be applied to C is simply stupid.
;-)
Ah, the depth of the argument becomes clear
Gtk has no table widget, no Unicode support, and no rich text widget yet.
Table widgets are kept in Gnome. You can use just the table widget if you wish, without having to use Gnome's overall session managment, etc.
Unicode support is handled by pango, which while still under development, is definitely ready for developers to start designing their projects against. Pango is much richer Unicode support than most toolkits (including Win32) offer.
Define rich, when you're refering to text widgets.
* The win32 api and Tk are the most obvious examples. I'm surprised that you don't know about them.
Don't be rude just to prove you can. Of course, I've heard of them. I gave a couple of examples, not a comprehensive list. Win32 is the worlds most comprehensive abomination ever written down, so I don't use it as an example of much. Tk is just too limited for most use. Why is Tk one of the "most obvious examples"? No one really uses it anymore (even Python is moving to Gtk+).
Of course Solaris could use Qt, thousands of people use Qt on Solaris.
Yes, of course they do. But, Sun cannot ship Qt becuase they would have to decide which C++ to support. There's Sun's C++ and GCC. They do not interoperate becuase C++ is not as portable as it should be. So, Sun would have to ship two sets of libraries and let you guess which ones to install.
Gtk+ did not require Solaris to choose. C is portable.
"Everybody's doing it" never struck me as an important reason to do anything :-)
I, on the other hand, haven't used Gnome recently. My impression of the differences from an end-user perspective (note:based entirely on hearsay, posts on Slashdot, voices in my head, and other incredibly reliable sources!) is that KDE has a more "tightly 'integrated'" feel than Gnome does (this may or may not be a good thing, depending on your tastes). Gnome, on the other hand (aside from Antialiased fonts), has a reputation for being better with the eye-candy. I also get the impression(again, just an impression) that Galeon isn't yet as "polished" as Konqueror is [this may or may not still be true).
Yet another possibly unfounded impression - I get the feeling that KDE development is moving faster than Gnome development at the moment, though I gather that Gnome development is still clicking along quite well.
In the end, honestly, I think it's as much a "look and feel" thing as anything else, unless you intend to contribute to the development, in which case if you're in the "Ewww! C++ Sucks!" category, you go with Gnome. :-)
In short - I'd say pull down the KDE 2.1.1 packages for your favorite distribution and try it out. I recommend using it just long enough to get over the traditional "this sucks because it's not what I'm used to" phase...then decide. You may very well decide that you still prefer Gnome, in which case, no big loss. You may also decide that you like KDE better. Also no big loss. You may not be able to decide, and find yourself switching back and forth regularly. That'll cost you a little extra time and effort due to possible addiction to bleeding-edge updates from 2 large projects instead of one, but still fun...
The more people that try both, the more "interoperability" improvements between the two will be suggested and implimented...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I just picked this one out - the below is applicable to just about all of the items you listed.
The first major reason they moved these things into Qt is because Qt's primary reason for existing is to be a *portable* GUI library. It runs under Mac, Windows, just about any *nix, including Solaris, AIX, Linux, *BSD, etc. That's the reason you can, by making two setting changes (which can be runtime), make the interface turn into Mac Platinum, including having all the menubars moved to the top of the screen and folded into a single menubar (a la Mac) (which can be done in KDE, making it a very close clone of Macintosh... although everybody seems to think it's a clone of Windows).
The second main reason (and I think this is a bigger reason), is that their main focus lately seems to be Qt/Embedded, which gives a *very* lightweight GUI on top of just about any OS kernel. It's perfect for everything from cellphones with 9 Mhz processors to the mythical webtablets to dashboard computers. Write it in Qt, and worry about the OS later... and it's fully unicode compliant *and* language independant (even mixed languages). That's a seriously important factor for Asian manufacturers making gizmos.
Oh, and one other thing:
to sell it to those less worthy (ie win32/commercial developers)
Fuck you. That's how I've put food on my family's table for years, and how leigons of engineers and programmers have fed, clothed and housed their loved ones for decades. Yes, there is a major shift in the works, and yes, I support it fully and believe that Open Source and/or Free Software is the way to go, and hopefully within the decade will` be the prevalant model of business. But that does not mean that businesses or individuals still working within the old model of software sales are (in your words) "less worthy".
That's the kind of shite that lead to the phrase "Open Source, Closed Minds".
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
KDE blah blah KDE blah blah KDE blah blah blah.....
I use Qt. I use it at work. We pay for it. We love it. We DON'T use KDE. We will NEVER use KDE. Ergo, features in Qt and not in KDE are what are useful to us. Plenty of people are in the same boat.
>>WHY does QT want to develop their OWN object model?
They're not. Reread what the feature is.
Why does everybody in the linux world need to bitch and whine when a new feature is added that *they* don't need, that it's a colossal waste of time. Guess what - other people have different needs than you.
For example the database stuff.... personally i have zero interest in this (we've written our own DB layer), but plenty of people on the Qt mailing list have shown interest in this so i'd assume thats why they're doing it --- CUSTOMER DEMAND. And it's customers that pay the salaries of the Trolltech engineers... which also allows all the free software types access to such an excellent toolkit.
Qt has a huge user base and a lot of them are paying customers... And one thing about paying customers is that they don't usually get into these stupid religious turf wars that the Open Source community gets into. They just want a good toolkit. And Trolltech delivers that.
j
What they're really doing is getting things in Qt up to a level of MFC or something like that (with the database-backed widgets, which have been in PowerBuilder and Visual Basic for a while now) so that it can be seen as a more complete solution for corporate development.
Remember, Trolltech is fundamentally a company, and as such has to get revenues, and thus needs to write things which will be useful to their corporate customers, not non-revenue-producing users of their technology.
If the focus here is why should FREE software developers care, well, they'll ultimately have much of this through KDE anyway. Otherwise, there are a lot of corporate types who read Slashdot anyway. ;-)
I for one am sick of hearing about people saying that this is better than that or that is better than this. It's been going on for too long. Emacs vs. Vi, Linux vs. BSD, KDE vs. GNOME, Sony vs. Nintendo, whatever....
If you like KDE, use it. If you like GNOME, use it. If you like pizza, eat it.
I don't think it matters if KDE is better than GNOME or vise versa. I think what matters is that people have the option to choose what they like best. One of the many reasons I feel uncomfortable when I use windows, mac or beos. I'm not even going to say what I use as my desktop because it's irrelevant (and no it's not GNOME :O).
Just my $0.02
--
Garett