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Qt 4.8.0 Released

jrepin duly notes the release of Qt 4.8.0, and extracts from the announcement some of the key changes for developers: "Qt Platform Abstraction (QPA) restructures the GUI stack to enable easier porting of Qt to different windowing systems and devices. Threaded OpenGL enables us to render OpenGL from more than one thread concurrently. HTTP requests are now handled in a separate thread by default. The file system stack received some heavy lifting under the hood. The result is better I/O performance."

90 comments

  1. First post! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better I/O performance confirmed!

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    1. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      I hate to reply to a first post but... why did "HTTP requests are now handled in a separate thread by default." take THIS long to implement...?

    2. Re:First post! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      I was thinking the same thing, seems like a pretty obvious design decision that should have been done early on...

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    3. Re:First post! by Tanuki64 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It involves webkit, which is a 3rd party package. The documentation of webkit is not the best, to put it friendly. Maybe this is a part of the reason?

    4. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hate to reply to a first post

      Then why not create your own top level thread? Is it because your post wouldn't be as visible if not attached to an early, high rated thread? Yeah, please don't game the system like that.

    5. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wasn't webkit originally forked (or derived) from khtml, which was KDE's rendering library?

    6. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As far as I can tell, "top level" AC posts don't show up at all.
      Don't hate the player; hate the game.

    7. Re:First post! by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 1

      Wasn't webkit originally forked (or derived) from khtml, which was KDE's rendering library?

      Yes, and that was made with the KDE framework, which in turn was made with Qt.

      The Ouroboros lives!

    8. Re:First post! by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      For those that like QT, or just want a really cool browser that runs on a thumbstick, runs on Win98-Win 7, as well as Linux and Mac might I suggest QTWeb which is what you get when you combine QT and Webkit? I keep it on my thumbstick as my "go to" browser and its damned nice, QT makes excellent GUIs and of course Webkit is a damned fast engine.

      As for TFA even though I'm primarily a Windows guy let me be the first to say thanks QT developers, your framework is one of the nicer ones out there and every program I've used based on QT has been a pleasant experience. You guys do top notch work and I for one am appreciative.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    9. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This may be hard to believe, but it was possible to handle multiple things at the same time before the idea of threads was created... and it was much more efficient. This was usually done using signals. In the near past, multithreading did not make much sense on low powered, small memory, single core processors in cell phones, when speed, efficiency, and small footprint were the top priority.

    10. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just a default. With Qt doing networking (http or otherwise) in a separate thread was very easy already. imho it's reasonable to default for a minimal amount of threads, and allow the programmer to decide how he wants to do threading.

    11. Re:First post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      afaik doing plain http requests do *not* involve webkit.

    12. Re:First post! by Tanuki64 · · Score: 1

      Ooops... Yes, you are right.

    13. Re:First post! by sidthegeek · · Score: 1

      Damn you, Netcraft!

  2. QT Creator by mutherhacker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    QT? Who cares!!! I'm peeing in my pants from the excitement about the new Qt-Creator!! :) I've never gotten excited so much about an IDE before :)

    1. Re:QT Creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With you on that!

      Seriously, I made a rant a while about how there is nothing comparible to visual studio on linux for quick click-n-droll UI dev.. and got properly put in my place! Qt-Creator is seriously a game changer for Linux dev.

    2. Re:QT Creator by LordKronos · · Score: 2

      Why? What's new in this version of QT Creator? Or are you just now discovering Qt Creator? If so, yeah it's an awesome IDE, and I can certainly understand your excitement, but it's hardly new.

    3. Re:QT Creator by GenP · · Score: 1

      Hopefully they can put in the clang parsing frontend in soon.

    4. Re:QT Creator by pwizard2 · · Score: 1

      I agree. QT Creator is the best IDE I've ever used. (Though Netbeans is pretty good for Java stuff, never liked Eclipse very much)

      --
      "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
    5. Re:QT Creator by baderman · · Score: 1

      I assume then, that you've never heard of KDevelop, right? Of course "de gustibus non est disputandum", but in terms of usability - for classic Linux developement, imho there's no better ide than KDevelop. Now I wait for Emacs and VIm fans! ;)

  3. Finally by Elledan · · Score: 0

    Been waiting for this release for a while now. Only the 5.0 release is going to be more significant. I hope that with 4.8 out we'll soon see it running on Android devices too.

    --
    Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
  4. Re:Qt by tonique · · Score: 1

    Perhaps there was more to Trolltech than just Norwegian background.

  5. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why use the word "vowel" if you can't even write it?

    p.s. it's pronounced like "cute"

  6. Good News by Tanuki64 · · Score: 1

    I am using the 4.8 branch for quite a while. I certainly did not try everything Qt offers, but I think I can say that networking and the webkit stuff really improved. Usually the *.*.0 versions are a bit 'shaky', so I am really looking forward to 4.8.2

    ;-)

  7. Re:Qt by Snowgen · · Score: 2

    How do you pronounce a name like that?

    I hate to feed a troll, but there's three schools of thought here:

    1. Cue-Tee
    2. Cutie
    3. Cute
  8. Re:Qt by Rennt · · Score: 1

    Cutie. As in pie.

  9. Seems like printing w/ CUPS is still not fixed... by omuls+are+tasty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was hoping that they might finally get a fix in for this bug (and the likes thereof), which has been making printing under KDE a pain in the butt for the last couple of years (the 4th most hated KDE bug out there) - but nobody seems to care, even tho a patch is available. Nice going with that community process... sigh.

  10. Re:Qt by Barsteward · · Score: 1

    you pronounce it "cute" - i think....

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  11. Shush! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Let us keep this on the QT.

  12. Re:Qt by Aladrin · · Score: 1

    Why can't you just say Q T? Why's it have to have to be pronounceable as a word?

    --
    "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
  13. Re:Qt by Anrego · · Score: 1

    I always spell it out... but then again I do the same with 4 letter words that don't look like they are supposed to be sounded out.

  14. Bad for the open source community and for software by Darting · · Score: 3, Informative

    Bad for the open source community and for software in general - http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2011-December/000908.html "So now there is total of 108 improvements and bug fixes available in Qt Commercial 4.8.0 that are not part of the LGPL release"

  15. Re:Qt by spaceplanesfan · · Score: 1

    No, as in hottie :-)

  16. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Tanuki64 · · Score: 2

    I am sure those improvements and fixes will sooner or later make it into the LGPL version. Neither Nokia nor Digia can have an interest in both versions drifting too far apart.

  17. C'mon everyone.. by tick-tock-atona · · Score: 5, Funny
    1. Re:C'mon everyone.. by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1

      Do the QT 4 dance!

      "beyond embarrassing"

    2. Re:C'mon everyone.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dun dun.. dun dun dun dun dun... dun dun dun dun dun.. dun dun dun (Do the QT4 Dance!)

    3. Re:C'mon everyone.. by Psychotria · · Score: 1

      I actually liked it. I wonder what that says about me

    4. Re:C'mon everyone.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I feel like I've been trolled, and somehow entertained.

  18. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by OG · · Score: 5, Informative

    And the rest of the note says that the delta between commercial and LGPL versions is not desired on their part and they want to get the changes into the LGPL version by the next point release. Hopefully in the process they'll better streamline the process so the two versions stay in sync, but nothing seems to suggest that they're trying to deliberately differentiate the two; in fact, the post referenced says just the opposite.

  19. Re:Qt by kcitren · · Score: 1

    I always thought of it as "Cutie", as in URAQTLN.

  20. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Darting · · Score: 1

    You're optimistic, hope you're right.

  21. Re:Qt by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    RTFM

  22. Re:Qt by nxg125 · · Score: 1

    Why can't you just say Q T? Why's it have to have to be pronounceable as a word?

    Because it's not an acronym. Do you pronounce "the" as T-H-E?

  23. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Damn, you're an asshole

  24. Re:Qt by ceswiedler · · Score: 1

    "T-h-e", like most pronounceable words, has a vowel.

  25. Re:Qt by Tanuki64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Normally I think it is good style to pronounce it the way the developers intended it to be pronounced. And this is 'cute'. However, in this case they simply were not able to make it commonly enough known. If you are in the right group, more or less only seasoned Qt developers, 'cute' is fine. Anywhere else you might get funny looks. You might even get this look under seasoned Qt developers when you say that you are a 'cute developer'. Unless of course, you are a coding girl with the appropriate looks.

    ;-)

  26. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why are there any differences unless Nokia/Digia want there to be?

    Surely a project like Qt does not maintain two totally different code bases. It must be much simpler to maintain one code base and then at release time rip out any parts you do not want to release as part of the open source version. Doing this would mean all fixes would be in both versions (except for those that only apply to commercial only features).

  27. Re:Qt by nxg125 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Fair enough. In that case, I say "cute" because that's the way the Qt guys have said it is pronounced.

  28. Re:Qt by DomHawken · · Score: 2

    I believe 'rhythms' is the longest English word in existence without a verb.

  29. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I believe 'rhythms' is the longest English word in existence without a verb.

    I think you mean "vowel"

  30. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

    What if only one version drifts far apart? Would that be OK?

  31. Re:Qt by LordKronos · · Score: 2

    I believe 'rhythms' is the longest English word in existence without a verb.

    Do you mean "vowel" rather than "verb"? If so, didn't you learn it in elementary school: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y?

  32. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Partial quote only...

    "I want to underline that this is not the intended way of differentiating our offering. Going forward I hope that we can be more aligned. I would like to see most of the current delta integrated..."

  33. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just as bad as the morons that are not creative.

    Windows. Word, etc..

    What kind of zero talent hacks come up with stupid naming like that?
    oh yeah losers that cant program without a click and drool interface.

  34. Re:Qt by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 2

    How do you pronounce a name like that? Only stupid "free software" hippies would make a word without vowils. Who's going to use this shit if you can't even say it?

    It's meant to be pronounced "cute", although I used to say "kyoo-tee" before I was aware of this.

    If I have my facts straight it was called "Qt" 7 years before adopting a Free Software licence, so those hippies of yours don't actually have a monopoly on consonants.

  35. Re:Qt by Isaac+Remuant · · Score: 1

    yeah, like those free hippies from LG and GM. Nobody can say those names either. That's why neither company ever made it.

    How can they expect us to pronounce a letter! And worse, Two letters one after the other!!!!

    --
    "Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
  36. Re:Qt by DomHawken · · Score: 1

    I believe 'rhythms' is the longest English word in existence without a verb.

    I think you mean "vowel"

    Oops!

  37. Re:Qt by DomHawken · · Score: 1

    I believe 'rhythms' is the longest English word in existence without a verb.

    Do you mean "vowel" rather than "verb"? If so, didn't you learn it in elementary school: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y?

    Not in England we didn't...

  38. Re:Qt by zoward · · Score: 1

    Wow - what a throwback - Wasteland FTW!

    --
    "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
  39. Re:Qt by Toonol · · Score: 1

    Eh, I know it's supposed to be 'cute', but I still call it 'kyoo-tee', and probably always will. It's a deliberate refusal. I don't think I'm alone in that.

    On the other hand, I do honor the creator's wishes in the case of .gif files, and pronounce it 'jiff.'

  40. Re:Qt by steelfood · · Score: 1

    Unless of course, you are a coding girl with the appropriate looks.

    Or referring to one.

    --
    "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  41. Re:Qt by joss · · Score: 2

    I love that this is modded 'informative'

    --
    http://rareformnewmedia.com/
  42. Re:Qt by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    No, as in hottie :-)

    I love a cup of hot tea

  43. And then there's phonetics by zooblethorpe · · Score: 3, Informative

    Strictly speaking, there's also a schwa (that funny kind of default unstressed vowel sound in many [most?] dialects of English) between the /th/ and the /m/, though it isn't spelled. That gives us at least two vowels.

    And in rhotic dialects of English, the /rhy/ could be analyzed as a diphthong (i.e. two vowels gliding from one to the other), potentially giving us three vowels for rhythms.

    And then there are fun dialectical oddities like "bed", pronounced with two clear syllables in some parts of the US, more like /bay ed/.

    Ah, the joys of English spelling and pronunciation!

    --
    "What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
    "A four-foot prune."
    1. Re:And then there's phonetics by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Ah, the joys of English spelling and pronunciation!

      I'm often thinking that the main grievance that future generations of Earthmen will attribute to USA is not its desire to police the world, but rather the fact that it was largely through its efforts that the monstrosity that is English became an international language.

      Then again... German could be decent, but came with too many strings attached. And English still beats Chinese. So maybe we should treat it like JavaScript - messy as hell, and it's easy to come with something much better... but, realistically, would you rather prefer ActiveX? ~

    2. Re:And then there's phonetics by Phantasmagoria · · Score: 1

      What? English did not became an international language because of the US. Rather, it is a direct result of British Colonialism.

      --
      Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
    3. Re:And then there's phonetics by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Yes, it got started by Brits, but it was arguably the dominance of U.S. post-WW2, that truly made it an international language of the masses worldwide, rather than "common diplomatic language" or somesuch.

  44. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by jopsen · · Score: 1

    ... It must be much simpler to maintain one code base and then at release time rip out any parts you do not want to release as part of the open source version.

    They're not maintaining a closed code repository, Qt LGPL version is hosted on gitorious. In fact they're moving towards some sort of open governance. So if they do have any significant commercial only features, they have to maintain that in a private git repository some where else.

  45. Re:Qt by forkazoo · · Score: 2

    I hate to feed a troll, but there's three schools of thought here:

            Cue-Tee
            Cutie
            Cute

    And for the record, the first two schools are wrong. Official pronunciation is "cute," according to the developers. This is especially useful when you have QuickTime and Qt things expressed with the same letters. QT is short for QuickTime and is pronounced "cue-tee," but Qt is "cute."

    Incidentally the name derives from the archaic Xt library. Which, as far as I know could only be pronounced by stating the letters.

  46. Re:Qt by swilly · · Score: 1

    A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y, rarely W, and even more rarely H.

    This rule covers every word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

    Crwth is great example of a word with W as a vowel.

  47. Re:Qt by geminidomino · · Score: 1

    Only babys who are still learning to reed say each letter of the word instead of just saying the word

    Holy shit, you just blew it up...

  48. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    English, now available in Welsh while stocks last.

  49. Re:Qt by Spugglefink · · Score: 1

    Eh, I know it's supposed to be 'cute', but I still call it 'kyoo-tee', and probably always will. It's a deliberate refusal. I don't think I'm alone in that.

    You're not. It's just too humiliating.

    On the other hand, I do honor the creator's wishes in the case of .gif files, and pronounce it 'jiff.'

    You're weak, Grasshopper.

  50. Re:Qt by GNious · · Score: 1

    Try to pronounce "Angstskrig" (scream of angst) :)

    Meanwhile, I'll keep calling Qt for "Q T" since the only word I can read from those two letters is "Cut", and thats a silly name for a toolkit.

  51. Improve on OS X? by iliketrash · · Score: 1

    Will this version of Qt improve the horrible impedance mismatch to the OS X GUI?

  52. Re:Qt by GNious · · Score: 1

    Lucky Goldstar
    General Motors

    though, I think these are strange names indeed.

  53. Re:Qt by Yosho · · Score: 1

    For what it's worth, a few years ago one of Nokia's internal Qt developers came and gave a presentation on it to my company. He told us that they all pronounced it "Q T", and the "cute" pronunciation was created and pushed by their marketing department.

    --
    Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
  54. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unless of course, you are a coding girl with the appropriate looks.

    Or, actually, just having cute looks. Being girl or bay has nothing to do with it.

  55. HTTP threads should always be separate by jago25_98 · · Score: 1

    "HTTP requests are now handled in a separate thread by default"

    Thank god! Im sick of tired of programs hanging up while they wait for a http request... or even hanging on connectivity loss.

    Do this always please devs, always!

  56. ngstschw by tonique · · Score: 1

    ANGSTSCHWEISS ('sweat of fear') is slightly better, it has eight consonant letters in row.

    Try Georgian or Czech for more consonant goodness! StrÄ prst skrz krk! (There's a c with caron, for the UTF-8-unable slashdot.)

    1. Re:ngstschw by GNious · · Score: 1

      Good one - that wikipedia page makes me glad that our Staflík a Spagetka DVDs are without speech :)

      (http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0tafl%C3%ADk_a_%C5%A0pagetka)

    2. Re:ngstschw by Forty+Two+Tenfold · · Score: 1
      --
      Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
  57. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Darfeld · · Score: 1

    Did you find out the sound of one hand clapping yet?

    --
    (\__/) This is Lapinator
    (='.'=) copy it in your sig
    (")_(") so it can take over the world
  58. Re:Qt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There no verb in this sentence. Thr s n vwl n ths.

  59. Re:Seems like printing w/ CUPS is still not fixed. by Danious · · Score: 1

    Soon as Qt 4.8 makes its way onto Gerrit for the Qt Project I can get onto fixing the bugs, the community process can't touch it until then.

    John, newly minted community maintainer for Qt Printing module.

  60. Re:Bad for the open source community and for softw by Danious · · Score: 1

    The problem is that Qt 4.8.0 was developed outside the new Open Governance process, so the DIgia devs had the same problem of getting patches accepted into Qt 4.8.0 as the rest of the community. Now that 4.8 is released it will be moved to the community maintenance framework and the patches should start rolling in and being approved by the community maintainers. Note it is not in Digia's interest for there to be a fork in the core modules of Qt, they will make their money by staying compatible and selling services and add-on modules.

    John, Qt Community Maintainer

  61. Re:Seems like printing w/ CUPS is still not fixed. by omuls+are+tasty · · Score: 1

    Ah, I wasn't aware of the fact it wasn't developed within the community process. At any rate, great to see Qt devs paying attention to things like Slashdot comments :)