Qt 3.1 introduces many significant new features and many improvements over the 3.0.x series. This provides an overview of the main changes since version 3.0.x. The Qt version 3.1 series is binary compatible with the 3.0.x series: applications compiled for 3.0 will continue to run with 3.1.
Qt 3.1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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COOLNESS. now KDE will have a built in scripting language that can be used inside qt applications and make qtscript applicaitons like applescript on OSX.
It means KDE 3.1 final can be released monday.
ECMA-Script – very dirty cool. Great decision of Trolltech.
Wrong, it means the final version can be tagged next Monday. But it will be not released until a significant amount of binary packages is provided by distributors/packagers.
I seem to not able find in the changelog about it. GTK2 already have the xft2/fontconfig support, so I want to see QT does that too.
Yes, Qt 3.1 uses Xft2 and FontConfig. As for KDE, there’s another RC release out, so 3.1-final may not be tagged Monday. Apparently, there some severe bugs in the RCs, and until those are resolved, 3.1 won’t be released.
I was perplexed about it too, but nestled, deep in the early changelogs for Qt3.1 it does quietly mention fontconfig/xft2 support.
I was suspicious, considering I couldn’t find an xfts switch for qt’s configure script, so I installed fontconfig & xft2 and recompiled qt — and yes! It works! The actual type rasterization is mostly the same (though, it seems xft2 handles bold fonts worse than my previous setup with the xft hack) but now I can drop fonts into ~/.fonts and it Just Works.
it’s about time…
Thank you, Rayiner Hashem and Shamyl Zakariya.. Now, I can rest.. 😉
Someone said that there was a bug that when you link against xft2 it actually links against xft1, or something… not sure.
I think that was me. In Gentoo, compiling Qt 3.1 can end up linking to Xft1 because of the way the libraries are named. Some people had that problem, so I advised them to move Xft1 out of the library path and recompile, which would allow Qt to find the right libraries. It doesn’t appear to be a problem in the Qt ebuilds, but if you get weird linking errors, that’s probably the best place to look. In retrospect, I wish the X people had named Xft2 more sanely. Xft2 just plain doesn’t play nice with Xft1; Qt isn’t the only application I’ve had problems with because of this.
Hey, pre-3.1 QT on OS X was *really* ugly. It sounds like QT 3.1, besides supporting Jaguar, has improved the visual quality of the fonts and controls in OS X a whole bunch. But…where are the screenshots? I’d like to see what the new QT *looks* like!!!
Jared
This new QSA thing is what looks the most interesting. Anyone know details outside what Trolltech has up on their site? [1] The vibe I’m getting is that there’s only one language that can be used for the QSA. This is to contrast with the one of the better example of a scripting system, the AppleScript system of the Mac OS. AppleScript is actually part of the Mac OS OSA, Open Scripting Architecture. Any language can be used for writing scripts that do the same things as in AppleScript- personally, I’ve seen Tcl, JavaScript, Perl and Ruby bindings/implementations that allow AppleScript-like scripting in the Mac OS, through the OSA.
However, one plus is that it appears you can write full Qt apps in this language, rather than just being used for gluging together C++ modules.
[1] http://www.trolltech.com/products/qsa/
making nice gui apps for configuring the underlying OS.
The Help Browser in Qt 3.1 seems damn good, someone should
put up a site dedicated to integrate other docs into it.
(e.g. API docs for GTK, OpenSSL, KDE, glibc, and so on)
Anon: Big difference.
About the issue of qt linking against xft1 as opposed to xft2 — all I have to do is move out xft1, compile qt, and move it back in? I’m just curious. Is that right?