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The Qt Company Introduces a Unified Website
- stevelaz 12y agoThis++ I've used Qt for desktop apps as well as apps on Embedded Linux. I've even used it with a Lua wrapper API that made development even easier. Is it a bit bloated? Yes. But unless you are very constrained for memory and flash space it should fit in your embedded system. They also have a way for you to select which components you want to compile for your target, allowing you to control how much of the bloat you actually use. :) tldr; I like Qt, and I'll use it again.
- ColinCera 12y agoWhich "Lua wrapper API" did you use?
- stevelaz 12y agoI used lqt from https://github.com/mkottman/lqt https://github.com/mkottman/lqt. It worked out great for the project at the time.
- gavanwoolery 12y agoI've moved back and forth between QT and raw C++ a couple times. QT might be "bloated", but so will your proprietary program if you create something non-trivial (i.e. a cross-platform application with networking support, threads, font rendering, etc). The bloat has never bothered me that much, but what did bug me was when Digia took over and kind of mangled the code base a bit. It broke a lot of my code, I got frustrated and could not easily find the old version of QT to work with. I think this is a move in the right direction at least...
- joshvm 12y agoI've run high performance code on QT without any problems. The DLL bloat is a bit annoying though there are ways to reduce the size of them. However, QT makes threading and concurrency so simple (and cross platform) that I wouldn't go with anything else. We just switched our system to Linux to avoid Windows' awful file IO and the code compiled (as expected) without a single change. Love it.
- 0xFFC 12y agothe problem is not this . the main problem with Qt is , it is not standard C++ library (or framework or toolkit or whatever you name it). All the moc crap ! made it useless .(yes I know , with hacking(or with little changing) it you can use it with other library like boost or anything . but in my mind this is not right way to do thing ! for example look at which one google chose for chrome in linux (before aura).Google chose gtk++ (which is much inferior than Qt in any ways , and as far as I am aware Qt licence was not issue with chrome) , but it is standard !
- brongondwana 12y agogawd; a tl;dr for a single paragraph. Talk about constrained for memory and flash space and a way to select which components you want to compile...
- iamtew 12y agoCould someone explain this for me please? It's not really clear from the website, but is this any different from the Qt project? http://qt-project.org/ http://qt-project.org/
- milliams 12y agohttp://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/09/16/the-qt-company-introduces-a-unified-website-and-20e25-monthly-indie-mobile-package/ http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/09/16/the-qt-company-intr... should explain it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- untothebreach 12y agoThis blog post explains it: http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/09/16/the-qt-company-introduces-a-unified-website-and-20e25-monthly-indie-mobile-package/ http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/09/16/the-qt-company-intr...
- groovy2shoes 12y agoPreviously, there was the community-run Qt Project, as well as the commercial Qt (qt.digia.com). Those two projects are now merged. The announcement is here: http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/09/16/the-qt-company-introduces-a-unified-website-and-20e25-monthly-indie-mobile-package/ http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/09/16/the-qt-company-intr...
- gpvos 12y agoThree people replied with the same link. It is clear that that link should replace the originally posted link.
- milliams 12y agoIt was posted an hour before at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8324111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8324111 It had a less exciting title though.
- bshimmin 12y ago800,000+ developers seems like an awful lot. I work mostly on the web - do I just not move in the right circles to meet these Qt developers?
- selmnoo 12y agoThat seems about right to me. Qt is very popular among people making physical products on embedded systems and such. The last 3 places I worked at all used and loved Qt.
- checker 12y agoI just started using PySide which is a Qt wrapper for Python. So far it's been very good. I chose it because I can get familiar with Qt and eventually I may use it in my C++ projects too.
- frownie 12y agoI concur. PySide makes developement/prototyping really efficient : the code is easy to read, no build system to maintain, no heavy tools to run, portability makes life so much better, you can freeze applications => deployment is super easy (well provided you don't have to copy the file on every PC's of the customer :); can't beat the web for that). And plus, Qt is very old and thus mature. It may not be as fun as the web development (which I admit is funnier, at least for the GUI part) but it provides a solid, predictible framework... Now I admit, I didn't play with JQuery which looks very solid too...
- Qworg 12y agoIf you do web work, you likely won't meet anyone doing Qt. I've used it for robot and industrial machine UIs.
- ColinCera 12y agoAlmost all Linux developers have used Qt, because KDE, and Qt has been around a long time; a significant percentage of all C++ programmers have used Qt on one project or another.
- 3327 12y agoGuys please ditch the carousel terrible way to convey information when the initial and first piece of information I am trying to absorb is moving around.
- revx 12y ago+1. The carousel switched faster than I could read all the text.
- CognitiveLens 12y agoThe site/message is good, but I'm not sure I would ever promote any in-flight entertainment system as a great example of a development framework in action. Almost every one I've used has been among the slowest, clunkiest, crashiest, most unresponsive, poorly designed "modern" UIs I've ever used. In order to avoid being entirely critical, however, Qt does serve a role that few other dev platforms do, and although I suspect there are better alternatives, I'm glad that there is still strong support for it!
- flaie 12y agoI had the chance to fly with Delta this summer, the electronics had been updated in my flight, and the UI was great and felt "responsive" in a certain way, let's say 5 times better than before.
- stevelaz 12y agoThe problem you have there is not only one of outdated hardware, but also an issue of software certification and other software red-tape in that industry. A friend of mine was working on one of those systems in the past (IIRC, they used Qt) and it takes a long time for that stuff to get released...
- pestaa 12y agoBetter alternatives? Please elaborate on your suspicion.
- fuzzythinker 12y ago$149/mo to develop on desktop OSes, that is too steep. It pretty much rules out all but big publishers. EDIT: Downvoters, please read and answer my replies below before doing so.
- milliams 12y agoIt's LGPL as well.
- maelys 12y agoThat's within the same price point as other leading IDEs. Plus, as a commercial company you can still use it for free provided that you abide by the LGPL.
- fuzzythinker 12y agoHowever, I am not able to distribute my apps through public application stores, as marked in the pricing table. Which makes that not really an option. Also, that pricing tables states only "Mobile application stores". There should be another row for "Desktop application stores" that covers desktop applications, no? FYI: Minor site styling bug: http://www.qt.io/download/ http://www.qt.io/download/ 's "Search" bar is too low when scrolled. Footer text is way too dark to be readable. Default text color should be current highlighted color, while hover should be whiter.
- Erwin 12y agoIt's actually $215 for 1 platform, $295 for all 3. Per developer. That's low compared to the old one which was something like $3k for one platform, $5k for multiple. If you cannot make $215/month with your software, how can you pay anyone a salary? If you are non-professional, why not use the open source edition and add value with support?
- fuzzythinker 12y agoWhy do you assume I'm paying someone a salary? I don't even make enough to cover my expenses (just started going indie). For someone like me, $149/mo is way too steep no matter what other options are. It just tells me qt is not an option for me. As stated in other reply, open source option not an option as it states I can't publish it in app stores.
- Sir_Cmpwn 12y agoIs there a good way to get into Qt? Some getting started blog posts for devs would be very useful, but I've always thought that the Qt learning curve starts with good intentions and then goes vertical. Does anyone have some resources to share?
- milliams 12y agoIt depends on what you want to use it for (Qt covers a lot of use-cases) but http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5/qtexamplesandtutorials.html http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5/qtexamplesandtutorials.html is probably a good start.
- zanny 12y agoqmlbook.org, the examples in Creator, the blog the OP post is from has a lot of tutorials on new features as they come out (http://blog.qt.digia.com/ http://blog.qt.digia.com/).
- vram22 12y agoTry this: http://www.qtrac.eu/marksummerfield.html http://www.qtrac.eu/marksummerfield.html He has books for C++ with Qt.
- dugmartin 12y agoNote for those looking for commercial pricing - it is sort of hidden under the top buttons in the download page: http://www.qt.io/download/ http://www.qt.io/download/ That said, just having a publicly listed price anywhere feels like a big step forward for Qt. In the past there was just a "Contact Sales" form with whispered mentions across forums about real pricing. I think this dissuaded a lot of indie devs from trying out Qt. I'm not sure why this new site doesn't just have a page called "Pricing" that explains what the monthly pricing means. Answer questions like "Do the tools lock out if the subscription is cancelled or do my rights to published statically linked Qt apps get cancelled?" and "Do I have to pay each month to keep those rights even if there is no active development on an app?". My guess is that Qt must make a bulk of their revenue on enterprise sales and are reticent to open up a self serve sales process (highlighted by the squeeze page they put up when you click the 30 day trial download button). It is a shame because I think Qt could enable a lot of great apps.
- milliams 12y agoIt's also strange that the open-source version doesn't have "Full rights to modify source codes". This is clearly an error.
- DSMan195276 12y agoI think the catch is that, being GPL licensed, any distribution of the software with modified source would be required to be open-sourced. With there commercial license you wouldn't have to release your code. (Though they list GPL, LGPLv2.1, and LGPLv3, you may or may not depending which license it actually is under and how you compile and run your program). How exactly did they get around the GPL to offer a commercial license anyway? I would have presumed that people doing open-source work on Qt would have submitted their work under only the GPL, and re-licensing that code should be illegal since they didn't write it.
- milliams 12y agoThey have an agreement to allow all contributors' work to be relicensed as closed-cource.
- blub 12y agoWow, did I get this right that they have an indie mobile offering now for 20 EUR (without VAT)? This would be fantastic! It used to be 130 EUR.
- milliams 12y agoper month, yes.
- orng 12y agoHow does that work? Do you have to continue to pay the license the entire time that you app is commercially available or is it only during development?
- blub 12y agoBefore qt.io was announced I wrote support and asked the same question. In short - yes, you have to pay each month according to them. It's quite reasonable perhaps except for apps that are updated very rarely.
- cjensen 12y agoYou can't sell the app without the license! So update rate doesn't matter.
- cjensen 12y agoYep. Only the really-expensive commercial license comes with a permanent license. We used to have one. It's such a pain in the neck to have to jump through hoops and deal with salespeople for every very-expensive renewal that we stopped renewing. When we want to update next, we'll just use the LGPL version. Opaque licensing plus sales people who don't even have the advantage of being able to negotiate on price is just too much stupid to bear.
- aceperry 12y agoI love Qt, good to see them promoting it more.
- codebeaker 12y agoIs there a modern book which targets a current QT? Last time I was looking (and on Google just now) I wasn't able to find a book that took someone from never having used QT to shipping something.
- km3k 12y agoI've been looking for this too, but most books like this are older and focus on Qt 3 or 4, not Qt 5.
- shmerl 12y agoI guess it was changing too rapidly. I'm waiting for such book as well.
- candl 12y agoThere's one available online: http://qmlbook.org/ http://qmlbook.org/ As the name says, it covers basically just QML, but QML is an important foundation of modern QT5 so I guess the book is very nice to have.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- zanny 12y agoThe docs site has a lot of tutorials, and Creator comes with a huge examples portfolio. Each example also has a small book about it.
- sz4kerto 12y agoDoes anyone have experience with Xamarin AND Qt as well? I am curious how do they compare for cross-platform mobile app development.
- blub 12y agoI only have experience with Qt, and can tell you that a problem with the current version is the difficulty in getting a native look on mobile. If you want a custom UI, QML is great, but Digia really need to offer native-looking UI components. They will do this for widget-based UIs on Android in the next version I believe, but no word on iOS. Other than that it's quite nice.
- mwcampbell 12y agoNative UI goes far beyond the look. Another concern is accessibility, especially for blind users. Non-native UIs can be accessible, but only if the toolkit implements each platform's accessibility API, and gets the implementation right, which seems to be very difficult. (For example, last time I checked, Qt's implementation of the relevant accessibility APIs on Windows was deficient enough that the TeamTalk voice chat client offers a "classic" MFC-based client specifically for blind users.)
- mwcampbell 12y agoI don't have direct experience with either Qt on mobile platforms or Xamarin, so I can't provide exactly what you asked for. But I can provide a considered opinion. I strongly recommend Xamarin over Qt, because even if you use Xamarin.Forms, you'll be using the actual native UI on each platform, not a mere approximation. So your app will be more true to the native look and feel of each platform. Moreover, it will be accessible to users with disabilities, especially blind users, as long as you don't implement any custom widgets of your own. (If you do need to implement custom widgets, you'll need to implement each platform's accessibility APIs as well.) True, these users are a minority, but if you can make your app work for them without considerable extra effort on your part just by building on the right foundation, then that's a win-win situation. Qt may offer the promise of "write once, run anywhere," but IMO, that should be more like, "write once, be inferior everywhere."
- kathrinalewis 12y agoDoes anyone help me with my Qt One Ecosystem as it's not working properly.
- switchbak 12y agoI was under the impression that I could use the (L)GPL version and deploy to various app stores - I wouldn't get support though. But this article describes "deployment rights", which one would apparently not have access to if using the open source version. A quick google revealed no additional information on this. Does anyone have any concrete info on deploying mobile Qt apps to app stores with the open source version?
- FigBug 12y agoLGPL requires that the user be able to replace the LGPL portion with an updated / modified version. This is usually accomplished with dynamic linking. Since the iOS store requires apps to be signed and disallows dynamic linking, there is no way for the user to modify the LGPL portion. I assume other app stores are similar. GPL is disallowed for similar reasons, no way for the end user to recompile and app from the app store and run it on their device.
- pushedx 12y agoI can make available the source for an iPhone app that could be compiled with XCode. How is this in violation of the GPL?
- nekitamo 12y agoAlso I believe you could make the object files (before linking) available on your website, and you'd still be fine. If I'm wrong someone please correct me.
- comex 12y agoIt's not a violation of the LGPL. The plain GPL is usually said to be unusable on the App Store because it has a clause that "no further restrictions" may be made on the use of the software; that may be fine with you, but when Apple redistributes your app through the App Store, they do it with a EULA that prohibits a wide range of things, so, as the argument goes, such redistribution violates the license. The LGPL does not have such a clause, so it's OK. (It does have a clause that prohibits further restrictions on reverse engineering, but the iTunes terms of use have an explicit exemption to the general reverse engineering ban based on "licensing terms governing use of any open-sourced components".)
- jo_ 12y agoDoes Qt still do that thing where they reimplement a lot of the C++ standard components like Vector? I remember years ago having problems with their reimplementation and wonder how much that's changed.
- FigBug 12y agoYup, QList, QVector, QString. There are a lot of reimplementations. I tend to find them a lot easier to use than the C++ counterparts. What type of problems were you having?
- heeen 12y agoQString is a proper unicode-aware string with conversions to many character codecs. It doesn't really compare to std::string.
- joshvm 12y agoI agree. QList is great, it's got very straightforward methods and it's more than fast enough.
- jo_ 12y agoNothing impossible -- just integration with the standard library algorithms and some older source code I don't want to modify. It's less difficulty and more a matter of laziness.
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- general_failure 12y ago$25 per month is a steal!
- dharma1 12y agoOn a related note, we are hiring a front end engineer to work on Ubuntu phone and desktop. Stack is Qt,QML, JS and possibly some html5. Could work for a QML dev or a web dev who wants to learn Qt. London based position - email me at jouni.helminen@canonical.com
- ryanmelt 12y agoFor all the ruby devs on HN: check out the ruby bindings to qt at http://github.com/ryanmelt/qtbindings http://github.com/ryanmelt/qtbindings. Makes developing GUI apps in ruby really easy. Be sure to checkout the large set of example apps to get started.
- rurounijones 12y agoI have always looked upon these kinds of projects with interest until it comes to the packaging. Let us say I create a really super-duper ruby qtbindings application. Is there any way for me to easily package it as a .msi / .dmg / .deb for distribution? I have messed around with ocra, monkeybars etc and they have never worked or require arcane and undocumented hacks. Packaging for distribution is the biggest challenge for desktop ruby apps I think.