Qt Archive

Maintenance release of the multiplatform toolkit, QT, was released, version 3.1.2. Also, a maintenance release of QT# was released also, version 0.7, and it works with Mono, GNU's Portable.NET and Microsoft's .NET. The main improvements over 0.6 are an easier build system, improvements in the demo apps, unicode support, and support for slots that take a QString parameter.

On Feb. 12, Norway's Trolltech formally announced its relationship with IBM, which is using Trolltech's ATopia office application suite as part of its 405LP design. LinuxPlanet caught up with the nine-year-old company's CEO Haavard Nord to ask him about the IBM deal, the latest on Trolltech's Qt libraries, the embedded device market, and about what Sun could learn from Trolltech's dual-licensing scheme.

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that it has completed the initial release of SciTech SNAP Graphics for QT/Embedded. This release is based on SciTech latest System Neutral Access Protocol (SNAP) architecture and shows SciTech's resolve to further enable the emerging embedded market with a level of graphics performance usually reserved for mainstream desktop machines. Additionally, SciTech began alpha testing on a new Linux version of SciTech SNAP Graphics.

dave linenberg wrote "Troll Tech last night released a beta of QSA, which stands for QT Scripting Language for Applications (download here). As a business apps developer for a major financial institution's trading floor, I know the traders will love this. Hopefully, with QSA, I can get rid of Excel, and give the traders Spreadsheet widgets, with the flexibility of "VBA-like" scriptability to boot!"

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.

The Qwt library contains GUI Components and utility classes which are primarily useful for programs with a technical background. Beside a 2D plot widget it provides scales, sliders, thermometers, wheels and knobs to control or display values, arrays, or ranges of type double. In the meantime, Trolltech released Qtopia 1.6 beta, A complete mobile computing platform.

Trolltech today announced the release of Qt 3.1 beta 1. This new version brings simplified creation of ActiveX controls, Motif integration enables gradual migration, Mac OS X integration and more.

The new Qt 3.1 upgrade features hundreds of enhancements, TrollTech claims. Among the features are better ActiveX support, Motif integration, while for MacOSX you will find integration with the Appearance Manager, anti-aliased text drawing, and user settings. The Qt OpenGL support for OSX is also greatly improved, and uses the hardware-accelerated drivers. Also, Qt 3.1 offers more classes available for multi-threading, thereby optimizing performance. Elsewhere, GTKmm 1.3.21 for GTK+ 2 was released.

Trolltech released Qt 3.0.5, a maintenance release of their popular multi-platform API. This release keeps full binary and source compatibility with previous versions.

LinuxJournal looks at Qt 3.0 and talks about why it's such a strong and useful visual design environment. Only two serious choices for a GUI toolkit are left: Qt and GTK. When Qt 3.0 was released in October 2001, it was a singificant upgrade and was well received. The most important features of Qt 3.0 are the extensions of the utility libraries, the addition of a rich text edit widget, fabulous support for international fonts and a vastly improved Qt Designer.

"In the vast world of GUI Development Libraries there stands apart a Library, known as 'Qt' for C++ developed by Trolltech AS. 'Qt' was commercially introduced in 1996 and since then many of the sophisticated user interfaces have been developed using this Library for varied applications." Read the Qt programming tutorial at LinuxGazette. Also, OSNews recently published a book review of the O'Reilly Qt programming book. Update: Maintenance release Qt 3.04 released just yesterday for various platforms.

From the press release: "Trolltech, the leader in multi-platform development frameworks, today unveiled Qtopia, a Linux-based application environment that brings the power of desktop computing to mobile embedded devices. Trolltech is the creator of Qt, the application framework that lets developers create cross platform, single-source applications that run natively. Qtopia is already being used to power the new Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA, with several additional design wins bringing products to market in 2002."

"The so-called GoF book Design Patterns (GoF referring to the Gang of Four -- Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides -- who authored it) has been very influential in software development--and rightfully so. Every programmer has read it or at least claims to have done so. In this article, I will explore how Design Patterns are used in Qt programming. Qt article at O'Reilly site, by Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, author of Programming with Qt, 2nd Edition, a book to be released late February and it will cover the latest Qt 3.1 API.

"Sharp's new Zaurus SL5500 is the first PDA device from a major manufacturer in a long time that uses a new operating system and a new user interface. See what it looks like! Most PDA users by now knows what the operating systems from Microsoft, Palm and maybe even Symbian looks like. That however doesn't mean there's no room for innovation, and Sharp is just nowadays taking the leap towards a major device launch with its new Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The SL-5500 uses Linux as its core operating system, with a GUI developed specifically by Norwegian Trolltech for the SL-5500 called Qtopia." Check the screenshots of the sweet-looking PDA at InfoSync.no.