Qt Archive

"With the announcement back in January of Qt going LGPL there was a small piece of information that slipped though the cracks of the wider news reporting, namely the fact that we were planing on opening up our repositories and development model. The first major phase of this work is now complete, and we are proud to present the results."

Qt Software (formerly Trolltech) released a new version of Qt SDK. Qt 4.5.1 includes bugfixes and optimizations made since the release of Qt 4.5.0. The list of changes can be found here. Qt Creator has been updated to reflect the feedback gathered since the initial release. A full list of changes is here. Finally, after two betas and an RC, Qt Software released the final version of the Visual Studio add-in. It is now available for download.

According to a recent announcement, Nokia/Qt Software has decided to discontinue the development of Qt Jambi after the March 2009 release of version 4.5. Jambi is a Java version of the popular Qt toolkit. The library will be made available under the LGPL license, and Qt Software will host and facilitate a community driven continuation of Jambi.

After Nokia purchsed Trolltech last year, doubts arose about how Nokia would handle the dual licensing model of Qt, the advanced cross-platform toolkit which lies at the base of the KDE Free software desktop. As it turns out, these doubts were unfounded, as Nokia today announced it's going to add the LGPL to Qt's licensing model, starting with Qt 4.5.

Qt Software today announced the porting of Qt to S60 on Symbian OS, the open smartphone platform. With the inclusion of the S60 platform, developers have an additional 80 million target devices that they can support with their Qt-based applications. An early technical preview of Qt for S60 is available for download from Qt Software current website.

The dot reports on the new version of Qt, as discussed by Qt developers Simon Hausmann and Andreas Aardal Hanssen. Much optimizations have already gone in the 4.5 development tree, and more is to come. You can also expect many functional improvements to the WebKit webbrowser engine, graphical effects and a new animations API.

Yesterday, Trolltech released the final version of Qt 4.4, their graphical toolkit which forms the base for, among a lot of other things, the KDE project. It still features the dual-license model (of course), so proprietary developers can license Qt, while open source developers can get a GPLd version (both GPL 2 as well as 3). Read on for a quick overview of the new features, as well as some findings by Ars Technica.

Nokia will introduce Qt to the maemo platform in addition to GTK+. The first actual step will be the distribution of the Qt libraries for application development in maemo.org during 4Q2008. Nokia wants to explore cross-platform possibilities between S60 and maemo. It is interesting also to check the interest in the developer community for Qt in the tablets. This is also a way to attract more attention from the KDE community, a sensible move especially if the Trolltech acquisition gets completed.

"You may have remembered that in the past I've talked about some of the development of 64-bit applications on Mac OS X. The gist of it is that Apple changed their position on supporting 64-bit Carbon, the library we depend on for running Qt GUI applications. It became obvious early on that Apple wasn't going to change their position on this, so it left us with two choices: keep Qt Carbon-only and forego 64-bit support, or create a port of Qt that used Cocoa as its backend. Naturally, since we already support 64-bit on the other platforms and since the idea of using Qt is to help insulate you from changes such as this, we decided on the latter option. It did mean that we had a bit of work ahead of us, since we had to re-write some of the internals of Qt (particularly widgets and events), but most of the other modules were already there. I'm happy to say after a bit of work, we've made progress and we're proud to offer an alpha for curious people that want to try 64-bit applications on Mac OS X 10.5."

Trolltech, the originator of Qt, which forms the basis of the Linux KDE desktop environment, is being acquired by Nokia, the world's number-one mobile phone vendor. Nokia expects its acquisition of Trolltech to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to enhance its Internet services business. The original press release is also available. Update: "We will continue to actively develop Qt and Qtopia. We also want to underline that we will continue to support the open source community by continuing to release these technologies under the GPL."

"Trolltech has released the Qt 4.4.0 technical preview, a pre-release that allows software developers to begin experimenting with the new features that the company has implemented for the next version. I compiled the technical preview release from source code and tested it on my desktop computer with Ubuntu 7.10. For testing purposes, I experimented with several of the new features, examined the included demo applications, and created a few simple programs of my own. The 4.4.0 technical preview adds a new concurrency framework, enhanced XML support, the Phonon media framework, and an integrated HTML renderer widget based on WebKit. This release is also the first to include support for rendering widgets on a GraphicsView component - a feature that will enable Qt developers to create richer and more dynamic user interfaces."

Trolltech has published a preview of Qt 4.4. "Qt 4.4 is one of the most exciting Qt releases ever, expanding the range of what is possible with Qt. While the release is still several months away, we would like to provide you with a sneak preview of several key new technologies set to be included in Qt 4.4."

Trolltech has discontinued its Linux-based 'Greenphone' development platform. Touted upon its introduction as the first Linux-based mobile phone with user-modifiable firmware, the device will be superseded by various third-party products, including not only open phones, but also portable media players, navigation devices, and home automation equipment, the company says.

Trolltech has unleashed a Windows CE version of Qt, its cross-platform application development framework. Qt/WinCE, made available today as a downloadable technology preview, is scheduled to see its final release 'late in Q1 2008', the company said. Qt is an application development framework aimed at enabling developers to compile binaries for Windows, Mac, and Linux OSes from a single code base. Qt's API (application programming interface) comprises some 400 C++ class libraries, Trolltech says.