What to Expect From Qt 4 386
An anonymous reader writes "A presentation given by Matthias Ettrich (director of Qt development, author of LyX, and founder of the KDE project), was given to the annual KDE Developer's Conference in Nove Hardy, Czech Republic. In this presentation, Matthias details what's going to be new in Qt 4.0, which will be used as a base for the next version of KDE after 3.2. Apparently, Qt 4.0 will not only include faster startup times and lighter memory usage, but will have sweeping architectural changes, including a splitting of Qt's GUI classes and non-GUI classes."
It Sounds Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:3, Interesting)
Not much Qt code uses the moc system directly, since this is deep black magic and typically a bad idea. They're preserving compatibility, and it seems like a pretty small price to pay.
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Out with the old, in with the new.
Developers can adapt or fail. It doesnt seem wise to quit working towards better systems because some guy doesnt feel like replacing his widgets.
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, though, that we're talking about volunteer developers. If they fail, there's no one rushing in to take their customers. I remember when the KDE 3 plans were being made, there was a recognition that KDE's weakness is in the number and quality of apps and so there was a goal of keeping the APIs stable for as long as possible.
Now, greatly improved startup time would obviously be a huge reason to switch as soon as possible. Since pure Qt apps already start much faster than KDE apps, though, I wonder how much speed KDE would really gain.
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
I welcome any sort of innovation. People will update their apps to meet any changes.
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Backwards compatibility is important (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been using Linux for years now, and one of the biggest annoyances is that software packages tend to be tied very closely to a specific version of a library. Without backwards compatibility, you sometimes need to have two or three different versions of the same library installed in order to use different applications.
When a library is used by a wide variety of applications, like Qt, GTK, libc, and so on, backwards compatibility should be ensured. Yes, this means the library may be a bit more bloated than it has to be, but the bloat isn't as bad as the bloat that results from having to install an ancient version of Qt in order to run an app that hasn't had active development for a few years.
This is coming from someone who doesn't do much software development; I just maintain a lot of systems and software libraries.
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
(Note: This is a joke. This is only a joke. If you didn't like the joke, then please just move on and leave me to enjoy it by myself. Thank you for your participation in this joke advisory.)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2, Insightful)
RTFA! (Score:3, Informative)
"Qt 4 mostly tries to preserve source-compatibility with a little search and replace and a COMPAT compilation switch. More porting will be required for styles and code that uses the meta object system directly."
How much stuff do you think uses the meta object system directly, aside from the internals of KDE?
Re: RTFA! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the large number of complaints is that although source-compatibility is -basically- maintained, you still have to recompile your apps. One of the nice things Microsoft has done is that you don't have to recompile your Win32-based app to work in
Re: RTFA! (Score:2)
Re: RTFA! (Score:2)
I'm not so sure its a good idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with you exactly, it sounds nice but why do we need to change an architectual change when the current QT architecture is the best there is?
Why fix what isnt broken? Especially when you are ahead of the curve and on the cutting edge? Why not polish what you have? Thats the exact problem Gnome has, they keep restarting and redoing everything and they get NO WHERE.
KDE 4.0 would be better if it were based on the current QT because it could be polished, if they instead have to rewrite alot of code for
Re:I'm not so sure its a good idea. (Score:2)
Hahahaa no we didnt (Score:2, Informative)
Japan has a better powergrid than ours. Who gave you the idea that we had the best in the world? DO not assume our system is the best just because we are the USA. Japan has alot of things better than us, as does Korea. Japan has the best power grid in the world, the most efficient public transportation in the world, the best cellphone technology in the world. They also have better robotics than us,
South Korea is the most wired country in the world, with the best internet technology in the world.
just beca
Re:I'm not so sure its a good idea. (Score:2)
As mentioned before, NA does not have the best power grid in the world. In fact, many would argue that NA has the oldest and most unreliable power grid amongst the developed nations (most of Europe and Asia have much better systems). Refer to this article [economist.com].
--PCB
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Think of the benefits of sleepycat DB versions as their architectures changed, it improved across incompatible version.
QT is nice and sweet as it is, we dont need too many changes too fast. Programmers are now getting really used to QT3, dont EXACTLY need a version 4 with a different interface to start learning.
Of course if they're slimming it up more and making it faster (like FLTK) without adding too much other stuff, adding more database drivers and porting to more a
Who's wanting? (Score:2)
It will take time for developers to start supporting the new format, which will leave end users wanting.
I expect I'll just do the same thing with qt4 that I did with qt3 (and gtk 2, etc.): install it, but keep older versions around until all the programs which use the library have been updated. This is the way libraries are supposed to work; you increment the major version when you've broken binary compatibility, you keep all the major versions installed that you need, and you uninstall them when you no
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Re:It Sounds Nice (Score:2)
Bigger and slower is all I ever seem to get from KDE.
Why turn KDE into Gnome? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the exact problem Gnome has. They keep messing around under the hood and nothing changes from the user point of view, development is moving at turtle pace because developers who want to write gnome apps cant figure out what to use because some new bonobo/mono type thing comes out every 6 months.
Developers need stability if they are going to work on big projects, we need at least a few years before a big re-write. I cant develop for Gnome because everytime I try to start they change something.
Re:Why turn KDE into Gnome? (Score:5, Informative)
Mono is entirely irrelevant - it's not related to the GNOME project other than having Miguel/Ximian involved, and you are certainly not forced to use it to write GNOME apps.
Basically, I think you're misinformed - if you write an app for GTK2/GNOME2, it will continue to work for quite a long time, until the next major revision (which is going to be needed simply in order to properly sync KDE and GNOME around standards eventually anyway). So, I don't know what you're complaining about really.....
Re:It Sounds Nice (OT) (Score:2)
Faster? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Faster? (Score:2)
Here's what I expect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2)
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I like Qt and I think TT's market grabbing scheme is pretty slick and fair, from a company out to make money, but I've paid for and had to endure enough non-free (free as in beer) softw
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2, Informative)
As for dual-licensing it commercially and as free software, well, I don't see how that forces anyone to do any
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2)
Trolltech are successfully creating and supporting free software, and managing to make money. I don't see that as something to be wary of.
Yep, it's a great arrangement... now... as long as they're making money.
There's nothing to stop Troll Tech from becoming unreasonable in their licensing demands... crippling all commercial KDE development. Since KDE is a desktop environment, commercial development is pretty important.
Only GPL software development is safe under KDE.
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2, Insightful)
"There's nothing to stop Troll Tech from becoming unreasonable in their licensing demands... crippling all commercial KDE development. Since KDE is a desktop environment, commercial development is pretty important."
Yes there is, it's called the GPL. If TrollTech decides to do something loathsome in a future release of Qt, the previously released versions will still be there under the GPL, and anyone who wants to will be able to modify it, fork it, etc to their hearts content.
The GPL is what ensures
Re:Wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because KDE is superior to the alternatives? And if you write free software, you don't need to pay one dime. I fail to see the problem. And if TT starts to abuse it's power, users would migrate to other toolkits.
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2)
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2)
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:2)
It has since Qt 3.x already. Qt 2.3 did not support doing this, however. Qt 2.2 and earlier didn't support AA fonts.
Re:Here's what I expect (Score:3, Insightful)
Trolltech and Canopy/SCO (Score:2, Troll)
I have switched to Gnome until further
AC Comment from other Canopy Employee (Score:4, Interesting)
Quote:
As an employee of a company in the same office buildings as SCO and partly funded by Canopy Group, I strongly encourage a boycott of all companies funded by the Canopy Group.
There was a lot of buzz about mergers a few weeks ago. It seemed that everyone was going to join into one large company called, you know it: SCO! .......
Moderators Suck ... (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't have to throw a hissy fit cuz someone's bashing your fave tool.
from http://www.pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?mop=modl o ad&name=Forums&file=viewtopic&topic=870&forum= 37
As an employee of a company in the same office buildings as SCO and partly funded by Canopy Group, I strongly encourage a boycott of all companies funded by the Canopy Group.
Taking money from Ralph Yarrow (Canopy) made all of us sick to our stomachs but we held our
Re:Trolltech and Canopy/SCO (Score:5, Informative)
A 5.7% stake hardly makes TT a "Canopy puppet." [urbanlizard.com]
Hint: Look at Canopy's website. Note that TT is listed under "Portfolio Companies." Understand that this in no way means that they are controlled by Canopy group. Hell, Microsoft owned about as much of Apple after their $150 million investment. Did that make Apple a Microsoft puppet?
New versions alway better in the long run (Score:2, Interesting)
Now this is what I like about Linux; every time I think some annoying little thing about the interface/OS is really starting to annoy me, a new version comes out and something get tweaked to the way I like it.
It's really the reason I have grown to like Linux so much: I can actually see the progress of its development moving forward. It seems in the past few years that Windows has just been moving backwards.
Re:New versions alway better in the long run (Score:2)
What I would like to see.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What I would like to see.. (Score:2, Informative)
Opera Web browser
LyX word processor
SuSE's YaST.
Scribus destkop publisher.
The Linux 2.6 QConf
Kylix.
YHBT Business books
and hundreds more.
Re:What I would like to see.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What I would like to see.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thankfully, GTK+ also does this. Gaim/Win32 is proof of that. With the new Wimp skin, GTK+ even matches the Windows look, for the most part.
Of course, there are also QT apps that I enjoy on Windows. MySQLAdmin, for one.
gcc dynamic linking? (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of years ago someone on the KDE team posted [www.suse.de] a nice analysis of the performance bottlenecks associated with dynamic linking, C++, and gcc, particularly as regards Qt use.
So I have to wonder, with Qt 4, KDE 3, gcc 3.3, how many of the performance problems remain?
Re:gcc dynamic linking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Though, I can't help thinking that prelink is a better solution to that problem. But whatever, they are surely aware of that technology by now.
use of the standard library (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though it would be hell for already existing apps, I would love to see use of standard library components rather than the re-invented QT versions. And even in those cases were the QT versions have extra features, I still think the advantages of using a library that is already familliar with most C++ programmers outweighs the disadvantages. Of course, that's just IMHO.
ec
Before you try to book a hotel room (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Before you try to book a hotel room (Score:2)
Actually, there is some kind of accent on the e of Nove ( ) but the slashdot form does not accept this character.
QT4 (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the signal/slot mechanism really bugs me. I am annoyed with the need to use non-ANSI C++ techniques (e.g. public slots, moc) to achieve results that could easily be done with legal C++ code. While not strictly illegal, the use of the SIGNAL and SLOT macros, along with the Q_OBJECT macro, are not very good techniques. Specifically the reliance on macros to achieve basic GUI functionality violates a key principle in Meyers' "Effective C++", namely avoiding reliance on the preprocessor.
Second, several GUI widgets do not have a proper separation of data from view. I am thinking specifically of QTable and QListView. A better approach, from an OO design perspective, is the one taken in Java Swing. The JTable and JTree provide a nice mechanism for separating the data model from the GUI display. I find it obnoxious to have to subclass QTable and build-in data model methods to achieve results that would be cleaner under a Model-View design paradigm.
The QT online documentation is not easy to navigate. They should take a lesson from the Java API docs and reorganize the QT docs along those lines.
Re:QT4 (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, I've found the Java API docs extremely hard to navigate.
Perhaps that's because of the bloat (in terms of classes) of the Java API, though.
Re:QT4 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:QT4 (Score:2)
Yup, I'd love to see this done in Qt.. it's even marked in the source I beleive (@since 3.1, etc..)
> what members are inherited and/or reimplemented.
I think it already is
> Also, getters and setters are listed together in the Java docs,
agreed.
Re:QT4 (Score:3, Informative)
There is no ISO C++ mechanism that does the same thing that signals/slots do. None. None at all.
Now before you start talking about Boost::Signals, libsig++, gtkmm, etc., take a step back. Those things you're talking about are libraries, just the same as Qt. They are not standard mechanisms any more than gettext
Re:QT4 (Score:2, Interesting)
I should admit, though, that my main annoyance with th
Re:QT4 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:use of macros in C++ (Score:3, Informative)
Very nice. But they forgot one minor thing: (Score:5, Interesting)
I only have this problem: the TreeView widget is single-linked. This a major problem for us, since our apps contains lots of trees. We have to do a lot of tricks, like keeping a pointer to the last item all the time.
I've posted this on the Qt newsgroup but I was ignored. Although many people have complained about it, Qt engineers ignored us. I think they should fix it in version 4.
Other than that, Qt is indeed the finest toolkit out there. It simplifies development a lot, and it fills the great void that exists in C++ libraries. It's really like the Java libraries or the
The biggest advantage of it is that it works as expected; in other words, you just create one widget inside the other, and voila, there is the app's gui. You can even do it programmatically, without the KDesigner.
Finally, it does C++ justice. It's the only library that shows how powerful C++ can be. After having used Qt and Java, I may safely say its up on par with Java...even better I would say, since it uses all of C++ capabilities, including the most important one: templates.
Re:Very nice. But they forgot one minor thing: (Score:2)
Re:Very nice. But they forgot one minor thing: (Score:2)
Re:Very nice. But they forgot one minor thing: (Score:2)
(ok, ok, sorry, but that was always something about Java that just bugged the hell outta me, and I know lots of my friends agree)
Re:Very nice. But they forgot one minor thing: (Score:2)
Very interesting it does not include everything according to Sun. What Sun needs to do with the MADHATTER is create a Java dev desktop. That would be interesting. KDE is great and yes you can is the Dev attitude. Why not have more than one desktop av
How about more standard C++ (Score:4, Interesting)
HTML rendering (Score:2)
Re:HTML rendering (Score:3, Interesting)
http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
It uses cygwin, which might mean some user confusion with filenames; if that's an issue for you you might want to forget about it. Also it'll mean you're stuck with GPL. Otherwise, I understand the results are quite impressive... if you don't want to use X, you can probably substitute the windows version of Qt, and everything should work OK. It'll be a lot of work to get it going, but after that it should
KDE Conference Talk Writeups (Score:3, Informative)
Writeups of the talks I went to are at:
the Nove Hrady wiki [uni-erlangen.de].
Qt 4 vs Qt 6 (Score:3, Funny)
KDE & KDE apps (Score:2)
I now run KDE, and mostly gnome apps.
You could probaly just run gnome with the KDE apps just fine.
Re:KDE & KDE apps (Score:2)
The secret to doing this and still having reasonable application startup times is to always leave one runing KDE app. I use kworldclock, just put it on an extra virtual desktop. This keeps their object broker running (CORBA/COM++ish thingy), and keeps major qt/kde libraries in memory.
Re:KDE & KDE apps (Score:2)
Not exactly necessary... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is what I really want from Trolltech. (Score:5, Insightful)
Big deal. There is no law against having your stock owned by questionable companies. Furthermore, no publicly traded company can really control who buys their shares. They are publicly traded, any one can buy or sell the ownership.
It doesn't automatically mean Trolltech inherits all the vices of every one who owns shares.
I would not be worried or even morally concerned until Trolltech's business decisions go south. Minor share holders don't dominate a company. Even 5.7% isn't a lot.
Re:This is what I really want from Trolltech. (Score:2)
Re:This is what I really want from Trolltech. (Score:2)
I despise Microsoft, for example, and use only Solaris, OpenBSD, and Linux at home nearly 100% of the time, but I still cannot avoid owning Microsoft stock via my 401K mutual funds (retirement takes priority, here). Corporate ownership via stock is more an affirmation than anything else. Qt is really a damn good product, and investors show that by buying stock (affirmation of good product). Microsoft, on the other hand, is simply the richest most
Re:This might mean something to me (Score:5, Insightful)
- Buy a Qt commercial developer license
- Release your own apps as open source
- Use a different toolkit
It sounds like you have chosen #3. I'm sure the people at Trolltech are able to sleep well regardless.Re:This might mean something to me (Score:2)
Re:This might mean something to me (Score:2)
Re:This might mean something to me (Score:2)
Re:This might mean something to me (Score:2)
A few years ago back when QT 2.0 just came out, I downloaded the free trial for Windows, and marveled at the fact that my program which was originally written for Linux "just worked." I wanted to create a particular Windows app at the time, and distribute it as Open S
Re:This might mean something to me (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no problem paying for QT.
I have a MSDN subscription in fact. That MSDN (Professional) was around $1000. Not too bad considering you get every single MS OS and the whole development environment (C/C++, C#, Java, VB, etc.) and all sorts of other bits. For the most part Microsoft is very good to their developers (hey, they make them money).
Compare that with QT which is around $3000+ for all three platforms (or what
Re:This might mean something to me (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a completely reasonable middle ground where you can release your application as GPL code - which you can legally sell for any price you want - yes you need to provide the source code to your customers (not a bad thing) and yes they can then give it away to their friends, family and even people they pass on the street - but if your application has true value - they will probably be more than willing to pay for it (especially if it is as low cost as you claim). Many users are not sophisticated enough to compile their own binaries and the making the "official" binaries what you sell - is legal.
Now if you are just upset because they will not give you (or sell at the price you pick) their library for you to use in closed source for profit applications, then it is far better that you found a different library.
Re:Sanity Check (Score:2)
Re:To all the GTK zealots. (5core:5, insightful) (Score:2)
For the valid part of your post, you're right, the current GTK file dialog does suck. There's a patch from Ximian floating around to change it to look like this [portalier.com] which is better bu
Re:To all the GTK zealots. (5core:5, insightful) (Score:2)
I wonder why they just didn't do it for gtk 2.0, since it broke so much compatability anyways. I've seen threads before gtk 2.0 came out saying that it would have a new file dialog, then threads saying that gtk 2.2 would have a new file dialog, then threads saying gtk 2.4 would have a new file dialog, and now threads saying gtk 2.6 will have a new file dialog.
Oh yeah, there was even discussio
Re:To all the GTK zealots. (5core:5, insightful) (Score:2)
Well, k3b seems to be one of the more popular cd burning programs around and is gaining a lot of mindshare.
I used to use xcdroast exclusively. But once I started playing with k3b, it's been impossible to go back. Feature wise it approaches some of the windows cd burning programs, which is no easy task.
Isn't xine more popular than MPlayer, and doesn't xine use their own toolkit, and not GTK? Gaim is great, but isn't there a qtopia version of it? Will a QT version be far beind?
Haven't they been talking
GTK - nyed! (Score:5, Informative)
Openoffice/Staroffice does not use GTK at all (in fact the first SO port to Linux was done by Matthias Kalle Dallheimer, a KDE founder...)
Mplayer has an optional GTK gui, which is hardly used by anyone. It also has at least two KDE guis. Not a very good GTK app.
XMMS has it's own GUI, GTK is basically used for the file dialog, which is arguably not the most impressive part of GTK.
Mozilla/Netscape uses XUL, it's own toolkit, again no GTK widgets are used, just some basic drawing routines.
This leaves GIMP (functional, but ugly) and GAIM (never used it, AOL is not my thing) for GTK.
Re:To all the GTK zealots. (5core:5, insightful) (Score:2)
Well, its certainly a start. But it still looks (& I suspect feels) very much like the same file dialogs that I was using 10 years ago.
Lets face it, the separate directory and file list should have been consigned to the scrapheap of history long ago. Using icons to distinguish files and directories in the same listing is just neater.
The control at the
Re:Haha (Score:2)
Re:I use linux but IANALH (I am not a linux hacker (Score:3, Interesting)
KDE itself is getting much better. I'm using a CVS version of KDE, and can say that things are *much* faster. Konqueror starts instantly, and most ap