Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 20th Oct 2010 22:22 UTC, submitted by vivainio
This is kind of... Well, good news, I suppose? It depends on where you allegiances lie, but it seems like Ubuntu is warming up to the idea of using Qt to develop applications. It's no secret that Qt is a far more advanced development framework than Gtk+, so it only makes sense for Ubuntu - a GNOME/Gtk+ distribution - is looking at it.
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RE[3]: Technical superiority to GTK
by Timmmm on Thu 21st Oct 2010 15:28
in reply to "RE[2]: Technical superiority to GTK"
Member since:2006-07-25
The benefits I found (I started using GTK then switched to Qt), in order of significance.
* Signals/slots. They may be slightly hacky, but it is hidden well and they really are the easiest way to code UIs. Much better than callbacks (wxWidgets, GTK) or message passing (MFC).
* Documentation. The Qt documentation is one of the best of any project I've used. It's very comprehensive, and tells you exactly what you need to know. It's like the opposite of Android documentation.
It's comparable, but slightly better than the MySQL, or MSDN docs.
* It's real C++. It isn't a hacked up a "C++ in C's clothing" using endless macros and casts like GTK is.
* More comprehensive. It includes way more useful stuff than just low-level UI things. Particularly QtXML, QtWebKit, QGraphicsView, and the network stuff.
* Qt Creator (ok, this didn't exist when I started using Qt, but still). It rocks. A sample of the many awesome features: 1. It supports smart tabs! 2. Code-completion actually works *cough* KDevelop, Anjuta *cough*. 3. Ctrl-click anything to go to its definition. Very useful.
* Performance on Windows. It doesn't suck. And it looks native, unlike GTK.
There's simply no reason to use GTK over Qt today. The only real reason was the licence, but that is resolved.
RE[4]: Technical superiority to GTK
by nt_jerkface on Fri 22nd Oct 2010 02:01
in reply to "RE[3]: Technical superiority to GTK"
Member since:2009-08-26
I would add a few:
Cleanly designed
Visual Studio tie-in
Bindings support
Better team leaders and funding
They still have some native control and font issues to work out in Win7 and OSX but once those are baked out you will see some ISVs switch over.
How much it is embraced in Linuxland doesn't even matter. There is nothing else on the horizon when it comes to cross-platform development.
RE[3]: Technical superiority to GTK
by segedunum on Thu 21st Oct 2010 16:46
in reply to "RE[2]: Technical superiority to GTK"
Member since:2005-07-06
...but rather *why* should I learn about Qt? What would it get me? Why is it better than the technologies that the Gnome world uses?
If you're looking at it from that point of view then you're going to find yourself in troll territory pretty quickly one way or the other.
Do you enjoy copying and pasting code from libegg, libsexy or anything else directly into your applications as you try and solve dependency hell? Hint, no one feels the need to do that with Qt. Would you like cross-platform applications to work? Do you enjoy using half a dozen different libraries in your applications besides GTK that all look and program differently? Do you really think that has ever been a good idea?
You can find a lot of things saying "Qt is superior" without any real details about what makes it superior.
If you can't glean some of the avantages from the above list then there's little that can be done for you.
Like I said, I know quite a bit about GTK development -- I do it for a living...
What kind of applications do you work on would be a good place to start. Anyone I have known who has ever done .Net, Cocoa, Qt or even MFC programming and has looked at GTK+ have said "If that's Linux development then no wonder it has no applications. I'm not going to write them".
You've probably been doing GTK programming for two long. Ask some Windows and Mac developers what they think because they're who the Linux desktop needs to grab.
Edited 2010-10-21 16:47 UTC
RE[3]: Technical superiority to GTK
by lemur2 on Thu 21st Oct 2010 22:37
in reply to "RE[2]: Technical superiority to GTK"
Member since:2007-02-17
Thanks, but perhaps I should have been clearer; my query wasn't so much "how can I learn about Qt", but rather *why* should I learn about Qt? What would it get me? Why is it better than the technologies that the Gnome world uses? You can find a lot of things saying "Qt is superior" without any real details about what makes it superior. Again, this isn't meant to be a troll or an invitation to a flamewar. Like I said, I know quite a bit about GTK development -- I do it for a living -- and I'm wondering what it is I'm "missing out on".
AFAIK, Qt Creator, the IDE, code editor, form designer and debugger, a true OO (primarily C++) paradigm, nice Python support, the clean abstraction layer isolation from the underlying OS that Qt provides, the extensive documentation provided for Qt, and the ability to easily support a wide set of target platforms ARE the main things that you are missing out on.
This site might be able to shed a little light on it for you:
http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/GTK_vs_Qt
It might be a little behind the very latest developments, but it seems to address your question reasonably well.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."More News »
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Member since:
2006-02-01
Thanks, but perhaps I should have been clearer; my query wasn't so much "how can I learn about Qt", but rather *why* should I learn about Qt? What would it get me? Why is it better than the technologies that the Gnome world uses?
You can find a lot of things saying "Qt is superior" without any real details about what makes it superior.
Again, this isn't meant to be a troll or an invitation to a flamewar. Like I said, I know quite a bit about GTK development -- I do it for a living -- and I'm wondering what it is I'm "missing out on".