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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."
Better I/O performance confirmed!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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 :)
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
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?
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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
;-)
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.
Let us keep this on the QT.
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"
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.
Do the QT 4 dance!
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.
You're optimistic, hope you're right.
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).
What if only one version drifts far apart? Would that be OK?
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..."
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."
... 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.
Will this version of Qt improve the horrible impedance mismatch to the OS X GUI?
"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!
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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.)
Did you find out the sound of one hand clapping yet?
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(")_(") so it can take over the world
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.
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
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 :)