Qt 3.3 Released; OSNews Talks With TrollTech's CEO

JigSaw writes "The new version of Qt (to be released Wednesday) features .NET support, full 64-bit support, IPv6 and backend support for two more databases. In light of the release, OSNews features an article with TrollTech's CEO, Haavard Nord. Nord says that he sees Linux strengthen its position in both business computing and embedded systems, while he forsees Qtopia and Linux taking over PDAs and Smartphones in the next few years." It's Wednesday, and Qt 3.3 has been officially released -- read on below for some more info.

Cronopios writes "The Norwegian company TrollTech has just released version 3.3 of their excellent cross-platform Qt toolkit, which is the foundation of KDE. This version adds support for .NET framework, 64-bit processing, IPv6 and gcc on MS Windows. The announcement and the complete list of new features and improvements are available at their website. As usual, the Qt libraries are released under several licenses, including the GNU GPL :-)"

Comments

Qt and Windows

[eric2hill]

The main problem is that as a C++ developer on Windows, I cannot do /any/ development with Qt without paying a $2000 license fee. The only way to get a GPL version on the Windows platform is to purchase a $50 book that comes with a "limited edition" of Qt/Windows, but lord knows what that means. I wish they had a development version of Qt/Windows that didn't include any deployment licenses...

Re:Qt and Windows

[grrussel]

Actually, you of course could use the X11 version in combination with Cygwin or Services for Unix and any X Server for windows. The X11 version of QT is QPL, GPL and commericial, but it is not restricted to Linux due to the cross platform nature of X11.

Re:Qt and Windows

[Brandybuck]

Having received that $39 book this week, let me offer a quick review of the enclosed Qt for Windows.

The Non-Commercial Qt 3.2.1 for Windows is fully functional. You don't get source code, but you do get binary libraries for VC 6 and .NET, and Borland 5 and 6. Included is the Borland 5 compiler. Compare this to the earler noncommercial 2.3 version which only supported VC6. The library is a DLL, so you can't statically link. I don't think this should be much of a problem for most people, though.

Functionally, it is identical to the Free Qt. Nothing has been removed. OpenGL, XML, tables, etc. Everything you're used to with the X11 Qt is there. The database component only supports SQL-Lite (included), and not OBDC or MySQL. Not being a database developer, I don't know how much of a problem this is. One might be able to create db plugins with the x11-free source code.

Licensing-wise, it's the standard noncommercial license. Your resulting applications must be freely redistributable and source code available. And they have to be strictly non-commercial. Any Open Source license is satisfactory, though you might need to add an exception if you use the GPL. The DLL is freely redistributable WITH your open source application. The license does stipulate that your app must not be a mere wrapper around Qt, so as to export its functionality.

This version does stick a "[Non-Commercial]" string in front of your title caption. This is the only functional change from the GPL/QPL version that I could find anywhere.

The upshot: If you intend to write noncommercial Open Source software for Windows, this version of Qt is far from onerous. If your purpose is to provide Windows versions of your X11 or Mac Qt software, this will more than meet your needs.

SuSE to use Qt3.3 with their KDE 3.2?

[advocate_one]

I've noticed the following passage in their readme for the SuSE KDE 3.2 build:

"Known issues:
* Qt 3.3.0 final has not been released yet, we expect it next week
and it will be avaible on ftp.suse.com.
The qt packages in these directories contain a late snapshot
(Qt 3.2 would need many patches, so we decided to go the 3.3 way)"

As far as I can tell then expect a rebuild of KDE 3.2 now that the final of QT 3.3 is available... so SuSE users who've just upgraded to that KDE 3.2 you should have read the readme first if you have problems later when stuff built with the real Qt3.3 gets released... :)

PHP bindings for QT

[TekZen]

I keep hoping that they will create PHP bindings for QT. They have been created for Python, they have been created for Perl, when is PHP's turn?

Maybe with the new object model in Zend Engine 2, PHP5 will be deemed worthy.

-Jackson

Re:Look and feel problem

[Brandybuck]

Using the 3.2.1 noncommercial version for Windows, the look is indeed native. Either "classic" or XP. In fact, the XP version uses the native rendering stuff.