Qt/Mac Application Developer Contest

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Qt/Mac Application Developer Contest

Posted by pudge on Wednesday February 11, 2004 @10:16PM from the mmmmm-g5 dept.

whitefael writes "Trolltech is sponsoring a contest in order to increase the number of Qt/Mac applications available and to award the best commercially developed and free Qt-based applications on the Mac. The prize? A screaming Power Mac G5! The top ten will be announced at Apple's World Wide Developer (WWDC) Conference 2004, June 28-July 2. The top two from each category will also receive iPods. Anyone out there interested? You have until May 7, 2004 to enter."

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I so wish... by Currawong · 2004-02-11 23:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

...that Open Office, The Gimp, Bluefish, Abiword, axyftp and some of the G and K apps were fully OSX native (GUI native as well, not just only usable in X11.app) - there's so much that open source apps and Qt/Mac could bring to the Mac world in this way.

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1. Re:I so wish... by Llywelyn · 2004-02-11 23:38 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Part of the problem with this is that the ports brought over, while they are integrated with Aqua and much nicer than working with them through X11, still aren't pretty and still need work. I'm concerned that "Aquafication" will stop after it starts running, but that's only where the "fun" begins.
  
  Take LyX/Mac as an example of this. I installed LyX/Mac earlier today to check it out, though I admit I was skeptical and have a strong preference for TeXShop and iTeXMac going into this. It's *significantly* nicer than using LyX through X11--its nice and clean, I can copy-and-paste out of it (but not into it), and its antialiased and gives good results.
  
  It isn't, however, fully integrated.
  
  The remaining issues range from major mechanical things such as paste to Cocoa-specific features such as services or the native built-in spell check that are nice to have around, to minor things like the icons reminding me of windows or that the command keys don't appear in the menus.
  
  I think that this is a good program and I applaud it and it may see some use (though paste not working may be a deal killer for me on this particular app), and I really like that Qt/Mac is there and makes this an easier process but it is not going to be a panacea in getting software ported to Aqua.
  
  --
  Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
2. Re:I so wish... by WillAdams · 2004-02-12 03:41 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  ::applause::
  
  I first heard of LyX when someone asked if it could be made to run in NeXTstep, and was immediately quite impressed and taken by the concept (What You See Is What You Mean document processor, see www.lyx.org for details).
  
  I'd _really_ like to see such things as Services handled within QT though, so that decently coded apps would automagically, ``just work'', as they do with the Cocoa toolkit. I suspect this would really require effort by Apple along the lines of their work on khtml for Safari --- I've argued that Apple should jump off the MS Office document bandwagon for a long while, and using LyX as the basis for a document processor would be a great way to do that.
  
  William
  
  --
  Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
let's see by ajagci · 2004-02-11 23:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Screaming G5" at, say, $3000, contract programming at, say, $100/h. So, that means you'd have to code something in at most 30h in order to make it worth your while even if you were certain to win. However, given that you will be competing against lots of people who invest irrationally much time, your chances of winning are negligible. Sorry, it's just not worth it.
1. Re:let's see by Shisha · 2004-02-12 00:40 · Score: 3, Troll
  
  Sorry, but with this logic, there would never be any Linux or GNU software. Since Linux and GNU is here, you argument must be wrong. Why?
  
  When someone writes something to release under GPL then he does it other things than profit (exercise, to show of..) so if he wins he basically gets something for nothing (the G5) and a bit of fame on top of it.
  
  When you submit a commercial Qt application then I guess you'll be able to sell it anyway, for profit _maybe_. Now getting something as frivolous as Apple G5 is nice, since most rational people realise that they don't really need a G5 and so won't buy it.
  
  The toughest competion might be the "best ported X11/Qt app" since this group that ported konqueror and effectively KDE will be silly not to submit it...
  
  Besides with outsourcing to India the $100/h programming days are over anyway, so once you start counting $10/h or maybe $1/h ... you'll get radically different numbers.
2. Re:let's see by piggy · 2004-02-12 01:03 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Except there is more utility at stake than merely the G5 (although, of course, for each entrant, the exact value of the utility will vary wildly). Some may gain pleasure from entering a contest, some may enjoy the possible prestige or resume boost from winning, for others, they might enjoy programming in general and see this as an opportunity to program but also have a chance at some material gain.
  
  Clearly your utility is equivalent to your economic gain.
3. Re:let's see by ajagci · 2004-02-12 02:42 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Sorry, but with this logic, there would never be any Linux or GNU software.
  
  No: Linux and GNU software is open source software for an open source platform. Even when GNU software was originally developed, the fact that it ran on SunOS was viewed as a temporary compromise, with the long term goal of replacing SunOS with something open source.
  
  The Qt/Mac competition promotes the creation of software for a proprietary toolkit on a proprietary platform and has no intention of replacing either of those proprietary tools with anything free.
  
  Now getting something as frivolous as Apple G5 is nice, since most rational people realise that they don't really need a G5 and so won't buy it.
  
  I don't see anything "frivolous" about a G5--its performance is roughly comparable to that of modern desktop PCs. It has a particularly stylish case design, but that's all.
Re:Qt vs. GTK by TheRaven64 · 2004-02-12 00:23 · Score: 3, Informative

I've not seen that study, do you have a link? I'm quite surprised by the result. I use the Jabber client Psi on my Mac. It was developed on Linux. To port it to the Mac, they needed to create a new makefile. For the first few Mac releases, none of the developers even had access to a Mac (they just sent code snapshots to someone else to build).
GTK may be more efficient for *NIX/X11 development, but it doesn't touch Qt in the cross platform arena.

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Kinda unfair this contest... by BibelBiber · 2004-02-12 00:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

Unfair because the winner seems to be obvious. Take a close look at what this Ranger Rick has done so far: Ricks Blog on Qt/Mac
That guy has almost completed porting KDE to Mac OS X. That is really cool stuff.
He and his companios really deserve the G5 and iPods and whatever else is to win :-)
1. Re:Kinda unfair this contest... by RatPh!nk · 2004-02-12 02:43 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Though RangerRick has done a lion share of the work (vastly more than probably the rest of us combined) there are a lot of other people involved in the project as well who have contributed a lot of time (Martin, IceFox,,ChArles etc..) albeit with less to show for it (with the exception of IceFox) I personally blame X11's virtual keyboard.....*damn you X11 virtual keyboard implementation*
  
  But yes, things are coming along quite nicely in the KDE-Darwin land =)
  
  Drop by and say hi! irc.kde.org channel=#kde-darwin or visit at KDE on Darwin HomePage
  
  We are always looking for help!
  
  --
  Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
Re:RTFM by morcheeba · 2004-02-12 04:35 · Score: 3, Informative

download it and look in /Developer/qt/doc/html/index.html

It's not monolithic, but it's all in one download.

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