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What to Expect From Qt 4
An anonymous reader writes "A presentation given by Matthias Ettrich (director of Qt development, author of LyX, and founder of the KDE project), was given to the annual KDE Developer's Conference in Nove Hardy, Czech Republic. In this presentation, Matthias details what's going to be new in Qt 4.0, which will be used as a base for the next version of KDE after 3.2. Apparently, Qt 4.0 will not only include faster startup times and lighter memory usage, but will have sweeping architectural changes, including a splitting of Qt's GUI classes and non-GUI classes."
but, is it absolutely essential? In a time where code needs to remain compatible due to the large amount of projects that are depending on that code, huge architectual changes implemented in a large number at one time will just show that the project wont get used for quite a while. It will take time for developers to start supporting the new format, which will leave end users wanting.
Password Authentication Bypassed for Root
I have alwways preffered Gnome to KDE because of speed issues (and the new Gnome is a lot prettier). But if this new base is much faster, then I may be forced to start using KDE again. Then again, my G5 should be arriving soon-- so forget Linux.
The New Root Council, kickin' ass sinc
Qt is great (well, if you like C++ and you don't mind the QPL), but there's really one thing I'd like: when will it ever have a font scheme that allows me to use AA fonts together with non-truetype X11 core fonts?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I have switched to Gnome until further
Help fight continental drift.
Paragraph 2:
"Qt 4 mostly tries to preserve source-compatibility with a little search and replace and a COMPAT compilation switch. More porting will be required for styles and code that uses the meta object system directly."
How much stuff do you think uses the meta object system directly, aside from the internals of KDE?
Big deal. There is no law against having your stock owned by questionable companies. Furthermore, no publicly traded company can really control who buys their shares. They are publicly traded, any one can buy or sell the ownership.
It doesn't automatically mean Trolltech inherits all the vices of every one who owns shares.
I would not be worried or even morally concerned until Trolltech's business decisions go south. Minor share holders don't dominate a company. Even 5.7% isn't a lot.
Now this is what I like about Linux; every time I think some annoying little thing about the interface/OS is really starting to annoy me, a new version comes out and something get tweaked to the way I like it.
It's really the reason I have grown to like Linux so much: I can actually see the progress of its development moving forward. It seems in the past few years that Windows has just been moving backwards.
Is more apps that require QT but not all of kde to run. That's why I use gtk apps... because most of them dont require gnome. There are gnome apps of course, and there are progs like Gaim that will give you a little somethin' extra if you have gnome installed, but you don't need it... Are there any qt apps that dont require kde to be installed?
Chaos is Divine *
A couple of years ago someone on the KDE team posted a nice analysis of the performance bottlenecks associated with dynamic linking, C++, and gcc, particularly as regards Qt use.
So I have to wonder, with Qt 4, KDE 3, gcc 3.3, how many of the performance problems remain?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
- Buy a Qt commercial developer license
- Release your own apps as open source
- Use a different toolkit
It sounds like you have chosen #3. I'm sure the people at Trolltech are able to sleep well regardless.taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
I'd like to see more use of the standard library. The traditional complaints of poorly conforming compilers is mostly just history. Except for support of the export keyword, most C++ compilers and standard library implementations are now quite good. Most platforms even have several excellent compiler / library combinations to choose from.
Even though it would be hell for already existing apps, I would love to see use of standard library components rather than the re-invented QT versions. And even in those cases were the QT versions have extra features, I still think the advantages of using a library that is already familliar with most C++ programmers outweighs the disadvantages. Of course, that's just IMHO.
ec
I believe someone got the name of the town wrong, it's Nove Hrady and not Nove Hardy.
First, the signal/slot mechanism really bugs me. I am annoyed with the need to use non-ANSI C++ techniques (e.g. public slots, moc) to achieve results that could easily be done with legal C++ code. While not strictly illegal, the use of the SIGNAL and SLOT macros, along with the Q_OBJECT macro, are not very good techniques. Specifically the reliance on macros to achieve basic GUI functionality violates a key principle in Meyers' "Effective C++", namely avoiding reliance on the preprocessor.
Second, several GUI widgets do not have a proper separation of data from view. I am thinking specifically of QTable and QListView. A better approach, from an OO design perspective, is the one taken in Java Swing. The JTable and JTree provide a nice mechanism for separating the data model from the GUI display. I find it obnoxious to have to subclass QTable and build-in data model methods to achieve results that would be cleaner under a Model-View design paradigm.
The QT online documentation is not easy to navigate. They should take a lesson from the Java API docs and reorganize the QT docs along those lines.
I agree with you exactly, it sounds nice but why do we need to change an architectual change when the current QT architecture is the best there is?
Why fix what isnt broken? Especially when you are ahead of the curve and on the cutting edge? Why not polish what you have? Thats the exact problem Gnome has, they keep restarting and redoing everything and they get NO WHERE.
KDE 4.0 would be better if it were based on the current QT because it could be polished, if they instead have to rewrite alot of code for a port, this is going to slow Linux on the desktop, and for what? A tiny bit more speed? I want to be sure that the benefits outway the cost here. The cost being time.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is the exact problem Gnome has. They keep messing around under the hood and nothing changes from the user point of view, development is moving at turtle pace because developers who want to write gnome apps cant figure out what to use because some new bonobo/mono type thing comes out every 6 months.
Developers need stability if they are going to work on big projects, we need at least a few years before a big re-write. I cant develop for Gnome because everytime I try to start they change something.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I don't have any major complain from Qt, as I have been using it a lot in our company and found out that it is the best.
.NET libraries, providing almost everything needed under the sun.
I only have this problem: the TreeView widget is single-linked. This a major problem for us, since our apps contains lots of trees. We have to do a lot of tricks, like keeping a pointer to the last item all the time.
I've posted this on the Qt newsgroup but I was ignored. Although many people have complained about it, Qt engineers ignored us. I think they should fix it in version 4.
Other than that, Qt is indeed the finest toolkit out there. It simplifies development a lot, and it fills the great void that exists in C++ libraries. It's really like the Java libraries or the
The biggest advantage of it is that it works as expected; in other words, you just create one widget inside the other, and voila, there is the app's gui. You can even do it programmatically, without the KDesigner.
Finally, it does C++ justice. It's the only library that shows how powerful C++ can be. After having used Qt and Java, I may safely say its up on par with Java...even better I would say, since it uses all of C++ capabilities, including the most important one: templates.
I use and enjoy wxWindows, but I do not think your criticism of QT and their licensing is very fair. They have a completely free license (GPL) which you can use - to create completely free applications. They have commercial licensing (admittited too expensive for "shareware" type applications).
There is a completely reasonable middle ground where you can release your application as GPL code - which you can legally sell for any price you want - yes you need to provide the source code to your customers (not a bad thing) and yes they can then give it away to their friends, family and even people they pass on the street - but if your application has true value - they will probably be more than willing to pay for it (especially if it is as low cost as you claim). Many users are not sophisticated enough to compile their own binaries and the making the "official" binaries what you sell - is legal.
Now if you are just upset because they will not give you (or sell at the price you pick) their library for you to use in closed source for profit applications, then it is far better that you found a different library.
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
Japan has a better powergrid than ours. Who gave you the idea that we had the best in the world? DO not assume our system is the best just because we are the USA. Japan has alot of things better than us, as does Korea. Japan has the best power grid in the world, the most efficient public transportation in the world, the best cellphone technology in the world. They also have better robotics than us,
South Korea is the most wired country in the world, with the best internet technology in the world.
just because its USA does not automatically equal best.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Most of the applicatons you presented as GTK apps do not use GTK widgets:
Openoffice/Staroffice does not use GTK at all (in fact the first SO port to Linux was done by Matthias Kalle Dallheimer, a KDE founder...)
Mplayer has an optional GTK gui, which is hardly used by anyone. It also has at least two KDE guis. Not a very good GTK app.
XMMS has it's own GUI, GTK is basically used for the file dialog, which is arguably not the most impressive part of GTK.
Mozilla/Netscape uses XUL, it's own toolkit, again no GTK widgets are used, just some basic drawing routines.
This leaves GIMP (functional, but ugly) and GAIM (never used it, AOL is not my thing) for GTK.
Moritz
Is it too much to ask that the next Qt will use the standard C++ string class instead of its own reinvention and kitchen-sink-itis that it suffers from at the moment?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Ever tried stepping through code with a debugger that's full of macros? Not fun, unless you like printf's. As far as Troll Tech using macros for their signal/slots, I don't care as someone using their toolkit. One less abstraction to worry about.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Just start e.g. kmoon or klipper. KDE and GNOME use the same docking protocol, so any existing docked program would suffice.
Moritz
Quote:
As an employee of a company in the same office buildings as SCO and partly funded by Canopy Group, I strongly encourage a boycott of all companies funded by the Canopy Group.
There was a lot of buzz about mergers a few weeks ago. It seemed that everyone was going to join into one large company called, you know it: SCO! .......
Help fight continental drift.
As others have mentioned, the problem isn't that we don't want to pay for a license.
I have no problem paying for QT.
I have a MSDN subscription in fact. That MSDN (Professional) was around $1000. Not too bad considering you get every single MS OS and the whole development environment (C/C++, C#, Java, VB, etc.) and all sorts of other bits. For the most part Microsoft is very good to their developers (hey, they make them money).
Compare that with QT which is around $3000+ for all three platforms (or what, $1500 for one platform?!). And it's only a GUI toolkit (sure, with some extra "fluff"). Way, way too expensive for what it does. If QT was $1000 for all three platforms, then I'd own several copies And many, many other people feel the same way. Their license prices are holding them back. They would have so, so many more developers working in QT if their prices were reasonable. That would only help them in the end as I have a strong feeling the world would become more QT-centric (I mean, it is a pretty good GUI toolkit; although the current stuff is rather slow).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Sigh. I really hate to say this, but I must agree with keeping API's backwards compatible across versions of libraries.
I've been using Linux for years now, and one of the biggest annoyances is that software packages tend to be tied very closely to a specific version of a library. Without backwards compatibility, you sometimes need to have two or three different versions of the same library installed in order to use different applications.
When a library is used by a wide variety of applications, like Qt, GTK, libc, and so on, backwards compatibility should be ensured. Yes, this means the library may be a bit more bloated than it has to be, but the bloat isn't as bad as the bloat that results from having to install an ancient version of Qt in order to run an app that hasn't had active development for a few years.
This is coming from someone who doesn't do much software development; I just maintain a lot of systems and software libraries.
Have you looked at this to solve your windows portability needs?
http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
It uses cygwin, which might mean some user confusion with filenames; if that's an issue for you you might want to forget about it. Also it'll mean you're stuck with GPL. Otherwise, I understand the results are quite impressive... if you don't want to use X, you can probably substitute the windows version of Qt, and everything should work OK. It'll be a lot of work to get it going, but after that it should be stable and usable...
Troll? Come on guys, we're not bashing Apple.
You don't have to throw a hissy fit cuz someone's bashing your fave tool.
from http://www.pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?mop=modlo ad&name=Forums&file=viewtopic&topic=870&forum= 37
As an employee of a company in the same office buildings as SCO and partly funded by Canopy Group, I strongly encourage a boycott of all companies funded by the Canopy Group.
Taking money from Ralph Yarrow (Canopy) made all of us sick to our stomachs but we held our noses and moved into their offices in the hope their stake would stay small. And we were out of business if we didn't.
There was a lot of buzz about mergers a few weeks ago. It seemed that everyone was going to join into one large company called, you know it: SCO! That buzz ended yesterday. Now the talk, all over the group, is how to distance ourselves from SCO and Canopy. The mention of our company on Slashdot resulted in very negative feedback and two potential customers walking away. Other's got it even worse. I hear Trolltech spent most of the day on the phone smoothing things over with their customers. Upper management meetings were held all afternoon among the group's companies (I'm not privvy to those, but can guess the subject matter). Companies that were considering a merger with SCO (some as close as 5 days away) are now backpedalling as fast as they can.
Canopy Group is the key to pressuring SCO. Thats where they get their money and their actions could harm the whole group and Canopy's plans. Pressure on the Canopy Group's members will result in pressure on SCO.
Save me from SCO! Boycott Canopy Group. If they want to point a gun at their own head, I'd rather they do it away from me. Write letters to the all the Canopy Group companies. We are all very small and even a few letters would have a major effect. The three we received yesterday sent management into a tizzy. Oh, yeah. And start at the bottom of the alphabetical list of companies, please.
Thanks for listening...
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Ignoring your personal attacks, the point remains that the pressure point here is Canopy and their group members. SCO could care less about a boycott, Canopy will continue to funnel money to them. The key is Canopy and Canopy is vulnerable through their holdings.
Ralph Yarrow cares about only one thing: the bottom line.
Only three emails to my company convinced mangement that there was a problem. They spent most of the afternoon in closed door meetings deciding on how best to distance themselves from this mess (at least that was the discussion when I was called into offer my opinions). They dreamed of the day we would be slashdotted, but are very dismayed that when it finally happened, it was entirely negative and harmful. From my colleagues in other companies, I gather the scene was common all over the office park yesterday. A couple hundred more emails will have a dramatic impact. The pressure will proceed directly from companies of the Canopy Group up to Ralph. When he sees the bottom line being attacked he will rein in SCO.
Some have said that it is unfair to punish the other companies. But the other companies are already being punished for SCO's actions. We have already lost potential customers who informed us they did not want to be associated with Canopy/SCO in any way. My product's release date has been placed on hold indefinitely while this uproar is going on. I fear this nonsense will ruin us. It would be foolish to start the rollout under this dark cloud.
The party line from SCO is that the opposition is from just a few disgruntled 'pot-smoking hippie-types' that can be ignored and they will go away. (From an overheard conversation in the restrooms. No doubt, Monday morning SCO employees will receive news of a new policy about talking in the restroom. But it wasn't the employees forgetting to check the stalls before tossing around disparaging remarks).
Give them a reason to
Writeups of the talks I went to are at:
the Nove Hrady wiki.
I don't know why you all are worried about QuickTime 4 f. I personally use QuickTime 6 on my iMac. Sheesh. You can't even see the latest pron and movie trailer's with Qt 4. Oh Wait... I think this is somthing else.. Damn you! you- 133t linux users fooled me again.
Two Towers-Two Worlds.One seeks triumphs and freedom for man.The other deems man unworthy and wrecks them.
You might want to have a look at this new QtDirectFB screenshot:
http://www.directfb.org/screenshots/FirstQt.png
I'm really looking forward to having the KDE libraries independent from QtX11.
Best Regards,
Denis Oliver Kropp
Qt4 will definately help in some ways. In particular, the fact that all widgets will now be double-buffered (instead of just most of the widgets) means that a lot of tearing will go away. Startup time should be reduced a little bit as well. Hopefully, a lot of work will go into fixing synchronization issues, which is the real problem holding back X-based GUIs.
KDE itself is getting much better. I'm using a CVS version of KDE, and can say that things are *much* faster. Konqueror starts instantly, and most apps start in less than 2 seconds. Konqueror has zero rubber-banding when resizing medium-complexity websites, and hardly noticible rubber-banding when doing reflow-heavy sites like Slashdot. The KOffice apps are all very fast, none exhibit any rubber-banding at all and all start up in a couple of seconds. All the standard widgets are really fast --- Juk for example, resizes with zero redraw even with a 2000-item listview. The only apps that really need work are those that use custom views or widgets (like Konqueror).
My setup is KDE CVS from Aug. 8, 2003. I'm Gentoo 1.4 on a 2GHz P4.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Because KDE is superior to the alternatives? And if you write free software, you don't need to pay one dime. I fail to see the problem. And if TT starts to abuse it's power, users would migrate to other toolkits.
If you can't recoup the cost of Qt-license, then you should REALLY reconsider your desision to write closed, commercial software, since there obviously isn't that much demand for it.
If you write free software you don't have to pay. If you want to write closed software, you have to pay. I fail to see the problem. WHy should you get the right to write closed software but you want to deny TT the same right? If you use their tools for profit, you need to pay them, IMO that is fair.
Then use Win32 or your precious Gtk, I fail to see the problem.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.