Qt 4 Beta 1 Available for Download

scc writes "Get it here. Trolltech's press release gives the details, including the projected release date: late first quarter 2005. Qt is the cross-platform GUI framework at the heart of KDE. At the same time, Trolltech released under the GPL Qtopia 2.1, an implementation of their GUI framework for Linux-based PDAs."

Comments

No Free Windows Version

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Qt is great, I use it for most of my projects, the only annoying thing is that the Windows version isn't free. There are free Linux and Mac versions released under the GPL, but no Windows version. \

The whole point of Qt is to make it easier to have software run on multiple OS's, but I can't test any of my stuff on Windows. Oh well, still kick ass software.

Re:No Free Windows Version

[twener]

Read the link. The native win32 port doesn't require Cygwin.

Re:No Free Windows Version

[furry_wookie]

Actually there is a version of the GPL QT ported to Win32. In fact its been out for quite a while.

The Windows version of the ultra excellent lyx editor used it for their windows port in fact. See: http://www.home.zonnet.nl/rareitsma/lyx/

Here is the home for the Win32 port of the GPL QT:
http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/qt3-win32/compil e-mingw.php

Its part of the cygwin project, BUT they have instructions for doing a native compile with other native Windows compilers such as Borland, Microsoft C++ etc..

Re:No Free Windows Version

[computerme]

oh for petes sake!

Can you at least to a simple google search to find out why this is not so??!

Its not like its been brought up on slashdot EVERY SINGLE TIME QT IS MENTIONED....

Short answer for the kids that ride the short yellow bus:

They had a free version for windows.

It was supposed to be used for only apps that were free and not for a commercial entity such as an in house enterprise app or commercial app.

But guess what? Nearly no one on the windows side followed the rules and Trolltech lost $$$$$$$$.

So blame your windows buddies.

They are to blame. Not trolltech.

If you make or save money on an app you build for a commercial entity, YOU should pay for it.

Don't agree with me or Troltech?

Don't USE IT!

Simple.

Nice to see things coming along...

[exigentsky]

I'm especially happy about Arthur and the new Qt Designer, we will finally have an accelerated OpenGL? desxtop and all will be smooth due to double buffering.

My only gripe is that the performance is still not great, but that should be expected with debugging code and all.

Trolltech is doing great work.

more info here

[carnivore302]

The press release is a bit light on details of what to expect from this release. here is a link that describes some of the features of the final qt4 version.

Qt designer and assistent apparently can be embedded into kdeveloper, visual studio etc.

Other improvements include

a new paint engine

a new text rendering engine

new containers (which are lighter than the STL ones)

better support for multithreading

a new docking architecture

and last but not least better performance and smaller memory footprint.

Re:more info here

[twener]

> Does the improvements to Qt include totally ignoring backwards compatability

You can compile in compatibility mode, there is a porting tool in work, and there is also a Qt 3 compability lib for now obsolete classes.

> I looking forward to KDE 4, when once again we all get to load yet another multi-megabyte Qt library

Qt 4 is broken down into smaller libraries: libQtCore (1,1MB), libQtGUI (4,5MB), lib Qt Network (0.2 MB), lib QtOpenGL (0.15 MB), libQtSQL (0.2MB), libQtXML (0.3 MB) and optional libQt3Compat (3 MB)

Re:more info here

[Jeremi]

Also, what's stopping you to distribute the Qt2 or Qt3 libraries with your program? Yes, it probably bloats the package, but the possibility is there.

For what it's worth, I just statically link the Qt library into my app, and it works well. True, it adds a few megabytes to the executable size, but anyone can just download the .zip file, unzip it, and run the app -- there are never any problems with missing or misplaced .dll or .so files, no DLL hell (i.e. library version mismatch problems), no installer scripts, no setting of load-paths necessary. I think the gain in simplicity and improved user-experience is worth the extra download size.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically your saying that they shouldn't be allowed to make money off Qt, but you should be allowed to make money off your software that uses it? Nice.

Qt saved C++

[Anonymous Coward]

Qt has done more for C++ than any other single project. Kudos to the Trolls.

Re:Qt saved C++

[PhrostyMcByte]

Really? More than Boost? A few of their libraries will be in the next C++ standard.

Re:Qt saved C++

[glennrrr]

I don't think that's very much of a good thing. C++ is a horrible kludge of a language, and Qt tries to salvage it with it's signals/slots preprocessing and other hacks. Everyplace I've ever worked in C++, people spent a huge amount of time implementing clever hacks to add features to C++ which other languages have for free. They had legacy code (MFC) or skills and were willing to spend upwards of a third of the development time grafting things into C++ rather than switch. We should be grateful that Trolltech has spent the time so we don't have to.

However, if you want to see what a clean language can do for a framework, look at how sweet Objective-C and Cocoa go together. Message passing right in the language, a clean memory management model, proper abstract interfaces, dynamic runtime module loading... It's just so beautiful.

I've been employed writing Qt apps for the last two years, and it's OK, but do my freeware projects in Cocoa and there is just no comparison in terms of rapidity of development and features you get for free.

Of course Cocoa is a Mac thing, but presumably Objective-C is a gcc language and therefore available for anybody to write a framework around. (I haven't looked at cross-platform Cocoa clones.) If you were writing Qt today, Objective-C would have to get some consideration.

Re:Don't forget

[Corbin Dallas]

It costs a lot of money to develop commercial software with Qt (and by extension KDE) because they use the full GPL license (as opposed to something more reasonable like the LGPL) for the Qt library to extort money from developers. Trolltech effectively control any possible commercial software market for KDE (or anything that uses Qt).

So what if you have to buy a licence for commercial development? If you're out to make money on your software then you deserve to pay. Show me another cross-platform development suite as flexable and powerful as Qt that's free. Go on, I'll wait right here till you get back.

But naturally, Trolltech are benign lovable types, aren't they? Sure they are... except they are part-owned by SCO and Canopy -- the Linux IP grab and sue specialists. Avoid Qt. It's poisonous to free software.

If you're going to troll, at least take the time to write something with fewer holes in it. Trolltech is partially owned by Canopy but not SCO. Big deal. If you were to discover that the Unibomber owned 5% of Nabisco, would you really avoid eating thier crackers? Qt ( and Trolltech ) are great friends to FOSS.

Qt beats Java/Swing hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

Having programmed in both Qt/C++ and Java/Swing for several years I can say that Qt kicks Swing's butt for ease of programming, speed and simply a better looking interface. The subset of C++ that Qt employs can be quickly mastered by any programmer - professional or novice. KDE is proof of that. When you are thinking about a cross-platform GUI think twice before going with Swing. It may be free - but you get exactly what you pay for.

Re:Qt beats Java/Swing hands down

[m50d]

I have tried both of those, but for ease of development I've found something which beats both is Qt/Python. Give it a try if you haven't - it's actually easier than Qt/C++ because you don't have to worry about moc and declaring slots.

still more info here

[Mitchell Mebane]

The article at KDE.news

Re:I don't intend to start a flame war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pulled this from the newsgroups...and it covers most diffenences between GTk and QT:::

- Qt is C++ based but it uses C++ in its own way because of its cross-platform
nature (through a special preprocessor)
- GTK is C based but it uses its own "object oriented" approach.
- Qt can rely on QtDesigner and KDevelop that, together, make up a real IDE
(similar to Visual Studio)
- GTK must rely on Glade only, that is a GUI builder equivalent to QtDesigner.
There is nothing like KDevelop for GTK (AFAIK).
- Qt runs (with recompilation) on Linux/Unix, MacOS X and Windows (all
versions)
- GTK runs on Linux. There is a porting of the old GTK1.2 for Windows. A
Porting for Mac OS X is under development (AFAIK)
- Qt has internal support for scripting (QAS)
- Should you need to add scripting capabilities to a GTK application, you have
to embed your own engine (Python, LUA...)
- Qt has integrated data-aware widget for data-centric applications.
- GTK has a separate project (gnome-db) for data-aware widgtes
- Qt-based applications and the KDE desktop "talks" each other via DCOP
- GTK applications and Gnome "talks" each other via CORBA
- Qt has exhaustive bindings for Python and a few other language (maybe Perl
and Scheme)
- GTK has exhaustive bindings for C++ (GTKmm), Python (PyGTK) and Ruby. There
are less complete bindings for Perl, Scheme, Lua and so on. Have a look at
www.gtk.org for a complete listing of the available bindings and their
development status.
- Qt has exhaustive documentation and a lot of examples form Trolltech and the
KDE team
- GTK has exhaustive documentation and a lot of examples from GTK team
- Qt is freeware on Linux only
- GTK is always freeware (but it is not completely available on Windows and
MacOS X)

Should you need to develop x-platform applications, have a look at wxWindows
(and wxPython) as well. The Linux implementation of wxWindows relies on GTK+
but wxWindows can run on Windows (all versions) as well, thanks to MFC, and
on MacOS (all versions), thanks to a specific GUI engine.

if only GUI libraries were really multithreaded

[CoughDropAddict]

I hear QT is good stuff. This isn't a slam on QT in particular.

However, I'm still waiting for the day when mainstream GUI libraries catch up to where BeOS was ten years ago, and put drawing in a separate thread from everything else.

There is absolutely no reason why GUI applications need to become sluggish when they are doing something computationally intensive. There's no reason that an application should stop posting redraws every time it makes a blocking call (like, for example, doing file i/o).

My eyes were opened to this shortcoming of "modern" GUI libraries by an entry in Bram's diary a while ago.

Re:Ignoring reality

[m50d]

Qt is truly free. It's GPL, GPL, GPL. If you're not happy with them also providing a propriety/commercial version, then you can fork the GPL version and release it only under GPL. Go on. Find enough people who really think it isn't free enough as-is, and fork it. Trolltech wrote most of Qt and they're the ones who get paid when people buy it, exactly like MySQL etc.

As for Qt being doomed, having programmed with Qt and the alternatives I could find, I don't think so. Qt is still much, much nicer to program with than GTK, especially since you now have to implement your own confirmation dialog box. Wx is getting there but still a nightmare to install (IME of course) and working through GTK rather than natively hurts it. As for SDL, it's great for 3d renderers etc, but would you seriously want to write a word processor (for example) with SDL widgets? I'm not sure where eclipse comes in, I thought that was a java IDE, in which case Qt is still the best toolkit to use with java on linux, IME, it's much faster than swing and fits in with the most popular desktop environment.

Re:Qt Windows, Speed

[computerme]

its supposed to be 20% faster overall. Ignore the trolls.