[H-GEN] Qt

[Sarah Hollings]

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Hi all,

I posted a bit around UQ on this topic, so if any of you have seen this 
before, my apologies.

I'm considering using Qt for a programming project[1].  The pasted email 
below lays out some of the reasoning.  I'd be interested in any general 
thoughts, but especially actual experiences of using it.

 >>Ian Mortimer wrote:
 >>>Has anyone on the list had any experience of the "Qt" GUI and 
 >>>application development toolkit?
 >>
 >>KDE is built on the Qt toolkit. Qt is now open source (under the GPL).
 >>This might be of interest:
 >>
 >>  http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/qt.html
 >
 >Although they don't qualify as such on their site, this is AIUI 
 >specific to Linux/KDE (where Qt is (now) Free):
 >http://www.trolltech.com/developer/download/qt-x11.html
 >
 > - there is a Free Qt for Windows -
 >http://www.trolltech.com/developer/download/qt-win-noncomm.html
 >
 >But:
 >  * has no database, socket, or other addon libraries
 >  * source not provided (binary only)
 >  * is version 2.2 (not the latest v3.0)
 >
 >PLUS:
 >* If you want to make money out of the software you write you have to 
 >get the Commercial Qt Licence.
 >* If you want to use the Free version you must release everything you 
 >write under the GPL.
 >
 >Dr. Graeme Hanson wrote:
 >> There a couple of choices for multi platfortm GUI development.
 >>
 >> 1. Java 1.2 or greater with SUN'S swing libraries  (free)
 >
 >This was our first thought, but complications are:
 >   * we're using some Free/GPL speech/signal processing code in C++
 >   * Java has a larger footprint and can be slow, esp with Swing
 >   * Qt uses the native windowing on each platform and is fast
 >   * Qt's qmake (claims to) give full cross platform makefiles
 >   * Some installations will need very accurate timing
 >        - considering C++ on RTLinux for this
 >
 >> 3.  BXPRO  (motif) expensive, but worth it (this is what we use) and
 >> provides cross platform.
 >> When we started our app. Qt was still in development stages, but is
 >> now now more professional.
 >
 >Interesting - will have a look at it for pricing.  Qt's licences are 
 >$2k-$3k for a full 1 developer licence.  And they have a Brisbane 
 >presence for support.
 >
 >Rohan Clarke wrote:
 >> Qt tends to be a bit awkward on anything other than a Unix box, I've 
 >done a
 >
 >What applications/examples specifically?  Would be interested in >seeing.
 >
 >> few GUI projects that were intended to be platform independent and 
 >always
 >> ended up with them being platform specific.
 >
 >Platform independence is hard to acheive.  Perhaps the best you can 
 >hope for is a fast port.  At worst you don't want to be totally locked 
 >into one platform with no hope of realistically moving to other 
 >platforms. Especially embedded.
 >
 >> Unless you're rolling out a big database app or something of the sort
 >> there's not a lot of good reason to go for a cross-platform GUI... 
 >anything
 >> else that can split its traffic into stateless chunks would be 
better >off
 >> with a web interface after all. In fact, these days I'd be surprised 
 >to see
 >
 >Secure authenticated sessions and transactions can be a bit difficult 
 >to acheive, cookies and SSL+HTTP have security issues.  Also writing 
to >files locally (logging, saving transaction files locally, caching 
etc) >can be an issue.  Versioning problems, the move away from Java on 
 >WinXP, and other problems make browser platforms difficult to target.
 >
 >Keen to hear of any actual implementations.
-- 
--- Sarah Hollings                 <sarah at humanfactors.uq.edu.au>
--- IT Manager            Ph +61 7 3365 6080  Fax +61 7 3365 6171
  Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology
  The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia



[1]:  This is a project at work, who would obviously like to make some 
money out of it.  I am trying to make a case for Open Source for the 
central part of it and selling value-add: plugs-ins and consultancy.


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