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GUI Software Upgrades

Trolltech Releases First Qt 4 Technology Preview 95

An anonymous reader writes "Trolltech has announced the availability of the first Qt 4 Technical Preview. Qt 4, the next major release of the popular cross-platform C++ application framework which KDE is based on, is scheduled for final release in late Q1, 2005. Download mirrors here, here and here."
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Trolltech Releases First Qt 4 Technology Preview

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  • I love Qt! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Per Wigren ( 5315 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @04:59AM (#9650424) Homepage
    I just wish I could use it when developing cross-platform GPL-programs. :(
    • What prevents you from developing cross-platform GPL programs with QT?
      • Re:I love Qt! (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        moolah, or lack thereof.
        • There is a non-commercial version for Windows available. It isn't free-beer-ware, but it's only $39 by buying the book. And it allows you to use the GPL. Of course you might have to use a one line exception in your license, but as a developer I think you can handle that.
    • Re:I love Qt! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I just wish I could use it when developing cross-platform GPL-programs. :(

      Your wish is trolltechs command. [trolltech.com]
      • Re:I love Qt! (Score:5, Informative)

        by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @06:03AM (#9650569)
        Your wish is trolltechs command.

        Well, no it's not. There is no free edition of Qt for Windows. If you want to develop a program that will run on Windows, you'll need to buy it.

        If you can't do Windows, it kind of throws out the whole crossplatform thing.
        • Well GNU/Linux, *-BSD, ...


          That certainly IS cross platform. :-P

        • Is there an alternative? Is the GTK+ port to Window production-ready? I use Gaim and Gimp on Windows, and have had no particular problems, but are they equal to supported Qt (when you pay)?
          • Re:I love Qt! (Score:5, Insightful)

            by arkanes ( 521690 ) <arkanes@NoSPam.gmail.com> on Friday July 09, 2004 @08:19AM (#9650862) Homepage
            <plug>
            Check out wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] (formerly known as wxWindows) for an alternative. No, the support isn't as good as Qt, even if you pay. On the other hand, unlike GTK, your app won't look and run like ass on windows. And the community support via IRC and mailing list is excellent. wxWidgets is, in fact, the only toolkit I know of that is mature, cross-platform, and free. (I don't consider GTK to be mature in the cross-platform category)
            </plug>
            • Re:I love Qt! (Score:2, Informative)

              GTK+/Win looks fine nowadays, especially with the native skin. I know lots of people that happily use Gaim without knowing it's in a different toolkit.
            • Re:I love Qt! (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Qwavel ( 733416 )

              On the one hand I agree that wxWidgets is very good.

              On the other hand I think that GTK on Windows looks good and works well.

              wxWidgets is particularly good if you are writing in C++ or Python. GTK is particularly good for C.

              Both are good options.
        • Re:I love Qt! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
          There's no free edition for QNX/Photon either. Heck, there's a lot of platforms that don't have native free Qt editions. What's up with that?

          On to a serious note. GTK+ for Windows did not magically pop out of someone's ass. It had to be ported from X11 to Win32 by hand. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from doing to same with free edition Qt.
    • I love GTK. I wish I could use it when developing cross-platform GPL programs.

      wait a minute.....
      • Re:I love Qt! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Per Wigren ( 5315 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @07:13AM (#9650697) Homepage
        You really can't compare Qt with GTK because Qt is more like a development platform/framework than a just a GUI-library. WxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] is much closer to Qt than GTK will ever be (and it uses GTK for GUI-drawing on X11), but Wx is nowhere as mature as Qt at this point.

        I started to use Wx for an application I'm working on, but it was impossible to even get a decent looking TreeView/CList with checkboxes which resizes in a sane way. After much frustration with Wx I switched to plain GTK in which I could great a GUI the way I wanted to, but now instead I have to look for external libraries for everything like sound playback, database connectivity, networking support, regexps, and much much more. It's like hell to support on several platforms. :P

        If Qt-Free was avaiable on Windows I could stick to Qt-conventions and support the application on all platforms with just a simple recompile.
        • wxWidgets (Score:5, Informative)

          by redragon ( 161901 ) <codonnell@maCOUGARc.com minus cat> on Friday July 09, 2004 @08:26AM (#9650884) Homepage
          I've been using wxWidgets for quite a while. I must admit that it took a little getting used to, but I don't think the parent post does wx justice. Sure wx isn't as mature as Qt, but it is Open Source (which /. ers should like), it can be used in commercial apps (which people that like selling software should like), and the guys working on it put in a ton of time making a great library. The differences between wx 2.4.2 and 2.5.2 are quite impressive, and their current MacOS guy seems to be making an effort to bring wxMac along by leaps and bounds.

          Resizing isn't as tough as you think, look into wxSizer objects. If you want a more robust basic tree control, take a look at wxTreeMultiCtrl [xs4all.nl], or sub-class wxTreeCtrl and make your own. It's the beauty of the system. I've used tree controls in several applications without such pains.

          It's always a bit of a trip learning a new GUI toolkit, but the sheer volume of great tools included in wxWidgets overshadows any pitfalls found right now.

          Just MHO.
        • If Qt-Free was avaiable on Windows I could stick to Qt-conventions and support the application on all platforms with just a simple recompile.

          A non-commercial 3.1.2 version comes with the new $39 book. It is complete and not crippled in any way. Or if you're really cheap, the old 2.x NC version is still on Trolltech's FTP site.
        • In this case you did have a couple of other options.

          1. Go to the source and add the features you wanted.
          2. Subclass and add a fork for the GTK version of your software. That means that the other version are Crap and the GTK version is ok, this might not seem like a big deal but it means in later version of wXWidgets you may be able to remove your hack. It also means you can do the same hack for the other sub systems without having to make that many chabges.
    • Re:I love Qt! (Score:2, Informative)

      by burnetd ( 90848 )

      This does not seem to have been posted yet...

      I've you really want to have GLP'd QT on Win32 help out here... [sourceforge.net]

      Otherwise stop moaning about it.

    • developing cross-platform GPL-programs

      OK, I'm not familiar with the all the licensing details (no flames please), but isn't the Windows license for Qt non-GPL (as in you need to pay for it). In that case, wouldn't it be illegal to link a GPL application against it on Windows. I'm guess I've missed something here, can someone give more details?
    • Come on people....

      While not completely free, a book written by two trolls is available here [trolltech.com] and sold through Amazon.com for $31.49. That book includes a non-commercial version of Qt 3.2 for Windows.

      So, you are able to develop free apps across both Windows and Linux for a very nominal cost. Consider it a $32 license fee with a free book if you like.
  • New and Improved (Score:3, Insightful)

    by UPi ( 137083 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @05:17AM (#9650473) Homepage
    Qt has always been techically superior and rather geek-friendly. Looks like in the new release they have found PHB-friendly names for their existing components. For example, they call the QTL (Qt Template Library - their replacement for STL) "Tulip".

    Seems like they have changed more classes than they usually do, and have moved a whole set of "obsolete" classes into a separate compatibility library to help the transition from Qt3 to Qt4. This probably means that developers have a few years to remove these classes from their codebase before they go from "deprecated" to "completely removed".

    The press release seems to be quiet about their previous challenge to Java (they have claimed a few months ago to produce a Qt4 that will be in "direct competition" to Sun's offerings). I'm kind of happy about this.
  • How soon in KDE? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by agent dero ( 680753 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @05:43AM (#9650526) Homepage
    According to the article, they implementing some nice big changes, like a new paint framework, and unicode renderer, etc.

    But by Q1 of 2005?

    How long after that will we need to wait until KDE switches over? (assuming that QT4 will be a step up from QT3)

    KDE team?
    • I seem to remember seeing notes from a KDE conference where there was a presentation about Qt4, and KDE plan was to make the next major release use it. I think I misunderstood or KDE plans have changed, since they released 3.3 beta1 with a very ambitious release schedule. Perhaps the plan is to get 3.3 out with some good features and fixes, before the massive turmoil of moving Qt3->Qt4 begins for KDE 4... But AINA KDE Developer
      • I seem to remember seeing notes from a KDE conference where there was a presentation about Qt4, and KDE plan was to make the next major release use it. I think I misunderstood or KDE plans have changed, since they released 3.3 beta1 with a very ambitious release schedule.

        I think you did. KDE 3.3 is a minor release, while KDE 4 will be a major release.
    • Re:How soon in KDE? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      KDE 4.0 will be based on QT 4.

      Now there's 3.3 point release before that :)
  • C++ (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @06:27AM (#9650616) Homepage Journal
    Does Qt still use that layer of C++ compiler workaround cruft?

    I never understood why they went and wrote their framework in a language that had such sucky implementations. I think GTK had it right - develop it in a language that works, then provide (de-uglified) bindings for other languages. gtkmm is a very clean API, IMO.
    • Re:C++ (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alex_tibbles ( 754541 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @06:43AM (#9650643) Journal
      Depends how long term you plan. There are benefits as well as problem associated with using C++, you know(!). My concern would be that now that there are decent C++ implementations (G++ 3.3 is pretty adequate, 3.4 will be good when fully stable, GNU libstdc++ is fine too, then there is stlport....) that they junk the non-standard re-implementations (slowly) and migrate to using standard code (reducing bloat).
      • Re:C++ (Score:3, Insightful)

        by OmniVector ( 569062 )
        it's not so much performance/bloat that many of us are concerned with, but the language used. Not only does Qt require a hack language on top of C, but it requires moc, a hack on top of a hack language.

        by hack i more or less mean a poorly designed language. of course gcc's implementation is good, but that has little to do with the design of c++. C has many advantages over c++ including but not limited to the fact that: you can write c++ in c (or at least do OOP in C to the similar functionaly of c++) and
        • Yes, C++ has flaws, but writing OOP in C suggests that you are using an insufficiently expressive language. I don't want to implement multiple dispatch in C++, I'd use CLOS if I needed multiple dispatch. Language features like this belong in the language implementation.
          If you don't like C++ but want to do OOP, why not use a better OOP language, rather than hacking it on C? I don't see how hacking pseudo-OOP onto C is better than using a problematic OOP language (C++).
        • You could do OOP in assembly as well, but I've never seen anyone do it...
        • C does not support generic programming (templates) in any way. Sure C, in being turing complete, can perform any function that C++ can produce but the amount of extra textual expression required in C to match what the C++ compiler does for you is staggering. Less code equals less chance of bugs, lower maintenance and faster development (well, that last point is arguable given you really need a C++ language lawer at times). This is a very important difference in these languages that some people fail to re
          • much in the same way game developers first and foremost target windows for game development, C++ is targted for commercial or large project development.

            it doesn't mean windows and c++ are better, just that they are the "defacto" standard. i know as well as the others why c++ was chosen for qt, but that doesn't mean i enjoy using the language to do development with it. my motives for programming are not for profit, but for enjoyment. money is a side effect for me really, so if i'm not enjoying it.. why
            • Neat. Thanks for the link. I got interested in ObjC when I first installed windowmaker a couple of years ago. I think the message syntax (method invocation) looked too alien for me at the time but now after trying to learn a couple of more languages I can get past that now. Functional languages are really interesting to use too. OCaml's use of cutting edge programming concepts: type inference; pattern-matching; robust types (allowing functions to return multiple values via tuples) makes for one of the mos
      • Re:C++, bad news (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Qwavel ( 733416 )

        I hate to tell you this, but they are doing the opposite of what you (and many other C++ developers) are hoping for.

        Instead of slowly migrating towards standard C++, the way that other frameworks have, they are taking deliberate steps towards a more proprietary language.

        For example, in QT4, they are moving to new template containers, but instead of using the STL (which even MFC developers tend to use) they having decided to develop their own container classes.
        • For example, in QT4, they are moving to new template containers, but instead of using the STL (which even MFC developers tend to use) they having decided to develop their own container classes.

          Qt3 also has container classes, Qt4 just has more of them. I for one welcome this, since they are much more useful than the STL ones. Ditto for QString versus string. Standards are great, but the Qt people have the courage to fix their mistakes.


          • I don't think you are understanding the purpose of a standard.

            Of course they can come up with something better by starting fresh, tailoring it for their environment, and taking advantage of the passage of time since the standard.

            I could improve the whole language pretty easily too, but we need to agree on some standards for lots off reasons (I don't think I need to explain them on /.). You should have a very, very good reason before you start undermining standards.

            The STL is now generally accepted (more
            • Re:C++, bad news (Score:2, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward
              You're right, there are a number of reasons to support standards. But the raison d'etre of standards is simple: compatibility.

              This issue is clearly moot in Trolltech's case, because anyone who would be using the QTL is using Qt and will have to distribute libraries anyway.

              The side benefits provided by standards can be extensive. For example, using the STL would mean that programmers wouldn't have to learn as much new API.

              However, if the standard is ineffective, or the new QTL is enough of an improveme
            • I don't think you are understanding the purpose of a standard.
              I don't think you understand the purpose of a standard. The library standard defines what libraries all C++ implementations must support. The standard is there to allow programmers to assume that certain services are available on all implementations. The standard is not there to force all programmers to use a certain set of services that may not necessarily be the best ones to use.
        • While the STL is a powerfull base of collection structures and algorithms it's not as robust as what Qt has to offer in some respects. std::string, for example, is pretty bare bones as far as it's implementation and developers end up having to create to a whole slew helper functions just to do basic formating operations.

          At this point they have only a couple of options: wait for the standards comitte to catch up with the real world (out of the question for a business); standardize on somebody else's librar
    • What workaround cruft do you mean? As for the bindings, not a big deal, as long as you stay in a oo context a binding is possible and there are bindings for many languages alreaday available.
  • SVG render ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by johnjones ( 14274 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @06:35AM (#9650630) Homepage Journal
    so...

    this would be a great thing to have and cross platform would be a killer feature
    IMHO

    regards

    John Jones
  • by dbglt ( 668805 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @07:30AM (#9650732)
    For those who are uniformed or unaware, QT is dual licensed:

    Firstly, under a commercial license (which is ~$1000)

    Secondly, under the GPL for non-commercial usage only

    However, QT for Windows is not released under the second license, meaning that if you want to develop with QT and the Windows platform - even if you are a non-commercial entity - you must purchase a commercial license (or manage to persuade the nice folk at TT to grant you a license, as a few open source projects have managed to do).

    I feel this limits the target market... as one of the reasons to even begin coding in QT (other than the WONDERFUL documentation :p), is the promise of cross platform availibility. I have heard it is possible to compile under win32 platform with cygwin and mingw - but I cannot confirm this

    Anyway, as I develop primarily for *nix platforms, this is not a big issue for me, but I would like to see QT opened up for the windows platform. That way I'm not limited in the future if I decide to work with another platform.

    • by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @08:37AM (#9650941) Journal
      # Secondly, under the GPL for non-commercial usage only

      I'm not a QT "fanboy," but I have to point out that GPL != non-commercial.

      With the GPLed version, you can do whatever you want, but if you distribute your program, it must also be licensed under the GPL.

    • Secondly, under the GPL for non-commercial usage only

      This is a contradiction of terms. If it's under the GPL, it is, by definition, usable commercially.

      See this FAQ [gnu.org] for more information.

      If Trolltech has limited QT such that it cannot be used commercial, then QT is not licensed under the GPL. It may be a variant of the GPL, but it is not the GPL.

      Jeremy
    • For those who are uniformed or unaware, QT is dual licensed:
      1. Firstly, under a commercial license (which is ~$1000)
      2. Secondly, under the GPL for non-commercial usage only

      Technically it is triple-licensed, as it can also be used under the QPL -- this is what KDE does. The QPL is easier to combine with certain other free software licenses. See Peter Vandenabeele's answer to "Why did UserLinux decide to not include Qt" in the UserLinux FAQ [userlinux.com].

      • I never really understod, how QT or Mysql can release stuff under GPL and non-GPL. How do they handle bugfixes and new features from 3. parties (guessing a bugfix is covered under the GPL)? How do they put it back into the non-GPL version?
        • People contributing bug fixes would be aware of the license terms of Qt. If they want their bug fix to be GPL-only then they should clearly state this (TrollTech may ignore the bug fix then).

          I'm pretty certain if you sent a block of code to TrollTech in a letter that said "Can you please add this nice fix I made to your code" that in court that would be an acknoledgement that you are allowing TrollTech to copy your code and put it under it's license.
    • Secondly, under the GPL for non-commercial usage only

      Erm... if it's GPL, then it can't be "for non-commercial usage only". Not possible, because then it wouldn't be GPL anymore.

      You can be commercial with the GPL. No problem. (But not proprietary. Maybe you meant that.)

      Here's the GPL FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

      (But yeah, bummer, it's not GPL for Windows. They would really gain in my opinion like they did with GPL'ing it for *nix systems.)
      • Though the GPL doesn't explicitly rule out commercial use, it does effectively seriously curtail the ability to sell software for money. Even when you do try, you generally get flamed for it - there was a fork of CDex that (under my understanding) technically did not violate the letter of the GPL, but many felt it violated the spirit, and they got hammered on it.

        That said, "being able to sell your software" is a pretty narrow description of "commercial use". We use things here internally all the time. R
    • For those who are uniformed or unaware...

      Yes, the military allways has a hard time with things like this. How good of you to point things out for them. Very patriotic, I might add.
    • > Secondly, under the GPL for non-commercial usage only

      Wrong, see this [gnu.org].

      Under the GNU GPL you could even sell copies of the Linux version of QT.

    • if you want to develop with QT and the Windows platform you must purchase

      Even for developing?

      What if the developed code is used exclusively by the developer and no one else?

      It would seem to make more sense if the commercial license were required upon distribution of QT/Windows code, not development of the application.

      • Yup, even if developing. I was evaluating some toolkits to use for some strictly-for-my-own-use apps which had to be crossplatform (between Windows XP and Linux, at least) and that took QT out of the running instantly.
  • Troll tech should trolls be modded up for a change

  • by Qwavel ( 733416 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @10:59AM (#9652138)

    I am a C++ developer, and I recognize that KDE/Qt are better in most ways than Gnome/GTK+, but this release is not acceptable to me.

    Unfortunately, when TrollTech tries to find the right balance between it's own interests and those of its community, I think it tries to error on its side, but ends up hurting both itself and the community.

    Other frameworks are migrating towards the C++ standard, but Qt seems to be migrating away from it, ensuring a lack of interopability of code and skills.

    Other technologies are trying to open up to more languages, but TrollTech has decided that C++ (their own version of C++) is all that anyone needs. Even as a C++ developer, I recognize that this is a bad strategy.

    Other open-source projects are moving towards cross-platform (eg. AbiWord and Gnumeric will both be available for Windows soon), but TrollTech continues to keep 90+% of the market (ie. Windows) away from open-source Qt developers and their software.

    • <disclaimer>I develop commercial software with Qt</disclaimer>

      I do not see how Qt is "moving away from the C++ standard" Trolltech produces a library, standards conformance depends upon your compiler.

      Trolltech does not produce their own version of C++; but their library does provide some macros that may appear to change the language. (ie: the new foreach)

      You are free not to use these things, or you may use as much fancy-pants standard C++ as your compiler will let you get away with. I mix

      • The STL is part of the C++ standard. So, when TT decides to create some new template based container classes, hut to create their own rather than using the STL, I consider this to be non-standard.

        Microsoft did the same thing years ago, back when the standard wasn't ready. People got really mad at them (which was quite ligit because MS knew this would be bad for developers though good for themselves).

        As the standard and its acceptance have improved, MS has improved their compiler and their STL to the poi
        • So, when TT decides to create some new template based container classes, hut to create their own rather than using the STL, I consider this to be non-standard.

          Trolltech had container classes before C++ was standard. Recently, Trolltech have built in a substantial amount of STL compatibility to their classes. They're not moving away from the standard at all. BTW, the python bindings for Qt are very nice.

        • The STL and Trolltech's containers are totally different. The STL is homogeneous and value-oriented. Trolltech's containers are heterogeneous and reference oriented. Trolltech is defining their own containers not because they want to, but because the STL doesn't encompass what they are trying to do.
    • Other open-source projects are moving towards cross-platform (eg. AbiWord and Gnumeric will both be available for Windows soon)


      Err... I don't know about Gnumeric, but AbiWord has had a windows port for well over 4 years... normally I wouldn't be anal about this, but AbiWord's a good program, and I wouldn't want people to think its not available for windows yet when it certainly is.

    • Hey, I'm honored to be getting so much attention from the moderators.

      Seems to be a battle between those who find it 'overrated' and those who find it 'interesting'.

      But I didn't mean to troll. I probably should have chosen a different subject though.
    • by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:16PM (#9663890)
      Qt doesn't use "non-standard" C++. You can write Qt code in regular C++ code --- moc simply writes a lot of boiler-plate for you. What you're complaining about is not that Qt uses non-standard C++ (since it doesn't), but that it doesn't use the STL style of programming. However, given that C++ is a multiparadigm language, that's perfectly valid.

      GUIs are inherently object-oriented and amenable to dynamic programming techniques. That's why people like Objective-C (Cocoa), and Smalltalk so much for GUI programming. The STL style of C++ is very anti OOP and anti dynamic programming. Indeed, the creator of the STL, Alexander Stepanov, has said OOP is a hoax. [c2.com] While Stepanov is entitled to his opinion, and the STL is certainly useful for a wide range of tasks, it's silly to try to shoe-horn Qt into a programming style that doesn't fit it's problem domain.
  • by SeanAhern ( 25764 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @02:02PM (#9654291) Journal
    I've been reading a lot of posts to this article which claim that there is no free version of Qt for Windows. If so, then what's this [trolltech.com]?

    I don't program on Windows, so I can't tell definitively, but that web page reads right. It sounds like there's a GPL version for Windows that lets you write non-commercial software without paying a dime to Trolltech. It's based on version 2.3, but it is Qt.

    If I'm wrong here, please educate me.
    • Qt Non-commercial for Windows is based on ancient Qt 2.3.

      Qt Non-commercial for Windows requires Microsoft Visual Studio 6, which is priced out of my league. Most hobbyists on Windows would prefer something that works with MinGW, a port of GCC to Windows, and Dev-C++, an IDE around MinGW.

      Qt Non-commercial for Windows is not published as source code and is thus incompatible with libraries published under the GNU General Public License.

      Qt Non-commercial for Windows is not compatible with selling copi

      • > Qt Non-commercial for Windows requires Microsoft Visual Studio 6, which is priced out of my league.

        Free is out of your price range? [microsoft.com]

        Everything else I do agree with however.
        • Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 is the command line compiler, roughly comparable to the MinGW 3.0 distribution; it's not the Studio (IDE). I guessed that Qt for Windows required some sort of IDE integration. Even if not, is Visual C++ 2003 compatible with libraries and project files from Visual Studio 6? There are two differences involved here: newer compiler (different flags) and lack of IDE (possible different project file format).

          • It's a commandline compiler, yes, but it's fully optimizing and all, it's the full blown compiler. It's so much faster than gcc it's not funny. I can hardly imagine it requires the graphical capabilities of the IDE, merely the workspace/project file format. I think you can be pretty sure the flags won't change -- it's converting MSVC5 projects that's cumbersome, since MSVC6 got rid of LIB.EXE for LINK.EXE (which *is* different). If you know someone with MSVC6, you can ask them to output makefiles from t
        • That's a link for the vc toolkit 2003. The Qt non-commercial Windows edition requires Visual Studio 6 and will not work with earlier or later compilers.
    • by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Friday July 09, 2004 @03:34PM (#9655282) Homepage Journal
      There is a non-commercial 3.1.2 version, but it's only available with the new Qt book (forget the title). It's much better than the 2.3 NC version. Besides being newer, it also supports many more compilers (and even comes with an older BCC).

      Unfortunately, as you can see by those verions, it limits you to certain versions. How long after 4.0 is released until a NC version is available somewhere? For some people this is an insurmountable problem. For others, like me, it's merely an annoyance because Unix/Linux is my primary target platform.
    • While not completely free, a book written by two trolls is available here [trolltech.com] and sold through Amazon.com for $31.49. That book includes a non-commercial version of Qt 3.2 for Windows.
  • Gotta love the fact that this whole comment page is filled with plugs for WxWindows and arguments over licenses that I've heard 100 times. Qt is GPL, get over it, so is the linux kernel. You want a Qt backend for Windows, then visit sourceforge or pay up. I don't think anyone actually read the damn article and discuss the new features. The new paint engine, SVG and Unicode Text layout I'm really excited about. Not so much about the template stuff, although interesting.

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