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KDE GUI

Screenshots Of Qt Designer 96

an Irie KDE user writes "This page shows some screenshots of Qt Designer on various platforms. Qt Designer is our visual user interface design tool. Technically, it is just another application written with the Qt GUI Toolkit."
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Screenshots Of Qt Designer

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  • And "cheap" is relative.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • QT designer is a "probably good thing" (TM) but we already have Kylix which will be much more better than anything QT can make.

    Q: Kylix is not free! Why should I buy it?

    A: QT/KDE is not free too, if you're to develop a commercial app. Kylix will be much more cheaper than QT/Professional so let's be honest and but Kylix.

    And I also have to say that i did not like what they tell about GNOME!

  • Thanks for telling me that.
    Yes it seems TT is to blame for that page.
    And yes i use Gnome/sawfish but i also use KDE applications and many KDE are superior to those offered under Gnome(kppp for example).
    Good luck with KDE!
  • Why are there no MacOS screen shots?
  • i dunno , new gnome is stable as a rock..
  • Now why are they licensing it under the GNU Public License Version 2. I suppose if it was under QT license, you would have to buy licenses to both QT Designer and QT for commercial programs? I haven't actually read that license so I'm not really sure about this.
  • 1. Qt Designer is not a complete IDE -- it's for designing user interfaces. So I don't see how you mix Kylix into the equation.

    2. Kylix is based on Qt. So it's not about selecting between Qt and Kylix.
    --
  • You people on Slashdot are amazing. The comment about Gnome was obviously a gentle poke at Motif, and a compliment to Gnome. Your irrational hatred of KDE/Qt is stopping you from thinking straight.

    Grow up, please!
  • Firstly, don't confuse GTK+ bindings with GNOME bindings. They are somewhat different things.

    "I get the feeling that the traditional FSF crowd dislike KDE/Qt because it's developed by a different group of people than gnome (read: europeans vs americans) There's a witch hunt around KDE/Qt that never seem to stop. (ok, the original license gripe was a real problem, but IMHO that's fixed now). A lot of other programs have conflicting licenses that cause problems, but there's no will (mostly among redhat and debian) to work with the KDE crowd to solve it. For example, debian redistributes pine in a easy to compile source package, even though they can't legally distribute as a binary. Why not do the same with KDE?"

    Absolutely not. I actually have little idea of where all the hackers of the two desktops are; nor does it really matter. What is happening is simple. Here we have two competant desktops for GNU/Linux. From a companies point of view, one of them needs to become standard. So I would see spiralling effect, with GNOME being considered standard, especially now after the GNOME foundation.

    And don't play silly political games with words like "witch hunt". There are plenty of zealots on both sides of the fence. Things just happen the way they do. There is no conspiracy here, just mindshare. Debian has had a strict interpretation of the GPL for a long time now. And if KDE thinks there licenses do not conflict, well I doubt they are entirely free of bias either. So stop the finger pointing.

    It isn't fair. But I have a feeling that the users of GNU/Linux will benefit from a standard being choosen...regardless which desktop it was.

    Now this doesn't mean that people should stop using KDE. You and everyone else on this forum should know better than that. Some people stick to the command line, even.

    I think splitting into two competing desktops was a mistake. But there was no way of stopping it and we can't go back now.

    Don't reinvoke the Desktop Wars again. It is far more pointless now than it was before.

    But what do I know? For all we know, it is KDE last week, GNOME today, and Berlin tommorrow. And in a couple years, the newbies crowd to UDE.

    It could happen. Maybe.
  • Come on - $1500/programmer (no royalties or runtime licenses when you sell your product) - or $2400 for dual platform. If you're doing a real commercial product this is chickenfeed - maybe 2% of what you're paying the person who's using it.

    I'm a chip-designer - the cost/seat for tools in our biz can be close to $100k for each engineer (for a simulation and synthesis license - more if you include a router) - so high we have to share in all but the largest companies - and they give QT away to people who aren't planning on making money with it - what more can you ask?

  • Anyone have a copy of the original page?
  • Why even bother asking ? If you were a developer, and not a troll, you'd know it was "glade" (unless you're really using 3dfx's proprietary API to design user interfaces ).

    Correction: 3dfx opened up Glide quite awhile ago.

    Someday I'll make devildog.org [devildog.org] into something.

  • Same reason. The set 'Linux people' is so large and diverse that there is NO pleasing everybody. And because open systems encourage hackers to scratch their own itches, interfaces change whenever the user wants them to change.

    But nobody is stoping you from running whatever window manager and toolkits you want. Grab the source and have a blast.
  • The GPL make an exemption for system libraries. Otherwise, you wouldn't have Emacs on Solaris, would you?

    The GPL needed this in the beginning because there were no free OSes at the time.

  • umm...

    Qt designer is GPL'ed so you can use it as long as the GPL is acceptable to you.

    QT is QPL'ed, so you can use it for free as long as you are willing to open source your code.

    It's only if you refuse do write open-source code and want to develop a proprietary closed-source application that you need to buy the $1500 commercial license to Qt (not Qt designed, as you're just using that, not linking it in) in order to get license terms that don't forbid linking to closed code.

    Btw, how are you planning to use glide to do your UI (woo - 3d word processors for my Voodoo2 to think about!)? Mayhaps you meant glade?
  • I know I will get moderated down for this but . . .

    !!POOP!!

    Come on, +5. I could understand if this bashing didn't happen with Gnome, but it just did, right on their website. And will you tell me the last few Gnome articles that didn't have tons of flames directed towards Gnome. TT deserved almost every flame, since most of them were legit complaints on their lack professionalism.
  • If you in the the camp that believes that the QPL is not GPL compatible (e.g. the FSF), then it's unnerving to see Troll bundle a GPLed application that links to Qt in the same tar file. It spreads the confusion that implicit permission to link to Qt is nice and dandy. Of course, that works to Troll's advantage, so I'm not surprised they did it. I am surprised that RMS doesn't mind too much.
  • It spits out XML.

    An UI compiler (uic) converts that to C++ code.

  • by AArthur ( 6230 ) on Sunday August 20, 2000 @07:16AM (#842037) Homepage

    "Which is fine, until ms updates the appearance of the GUI, or some third party does it (and there are several who have - chroma, windowblinds). When this happens, Qt apps will stand out and probably look pretty ugly, compared to the rest of the system. Think of those boring grey stark bevels sitting inside something like Apple's Aqua, because it doesn't pick up on the *real* native appearance. Ugh. I'm all for fancy interfaces, but please: *consistent* fancy interfaces. Developers and toolkit vendors have to keep that in mind."

    If you aren't using the OS's native toolkit, this will always be a problem. Many apps suffer from this program, and it's not just third party software. For example, Microsoft Office on Mac OS and Windows does not use native widgets on either platform for everything.There are countless other examples.

    They seem to have invented there own for widgets specfically for the program where needed. This certianly does break WindowBlinds, Kaliedoscope, Color Themes, etc. That's why I avoid themes, and try to go with the native color. If figure that way it has been highly tested, and should be consistant (if the UI developer had half a brain).

    Qt and KDE by far are the hardest working widget set/desktop when it comes to trying to match one widget set to another one. Qt apps on Windows, is very similar to the MFC widget set. The screenshots show this is also true on other platforms.

    People ask, why don't you just use the native widget set in the first place for everything? That would certainly make everything very consistant. But it would limit the design of advanced features and ease of use, by limiting ideas to one company. Not to mention that often the native widget sets API is difficult to program for, or clumbsy.

    Good cross theming as you pointed out, isn't perfect, but it's a good start.

  • they just have to pay the license. Exactly like any other product.

    Except GTK+...

  • Probably not a direct response to Kylix -- I understand Borland is probably paying Trolltech quite a bit to take the Qt commercial license fees off the hands of Kylix owners.
  • I know that Trolltech hired a
    developer for a Mac port recently,
    so it seems that there will be Mac
    support in the future.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Trolltech has a right to a sense of humor. Evidently you lack one. Anyway, trolls have to live up to their reputations. It's my understanding that trolls have a taste for gnomes, hobbits and dwarves. Always good for the pot.

    Must bet back under my bridge. Dawn is approaching.

  • by mbrubeck ( 73587 ) on Sunday August 20, 2000 @10:34AM (#842042) Homepage
    Mosfet.org [mosfet.org] (homepage of the head theme/style developer for KDE) was updated a couple days ago after a long quiet period. Anyone interested in KDE/Qt themes should read what Mosfet has to say.

    Among other things, he talks about pros and cons of both GTK and KDE themes. He also the future of KDE styles up to and beyond the KDE2 release, and gives his take on recent XFree86 developments.

  • by mckinlay ( 222722 ) <slashdot@ekto.ek ... Dco.uk minus bsd> on Saturday August 19, 2000 @11:48PM (#842043) Homepage
    Qt adjusts just perfectly to the platform's native look and feel.

    From the screenshots, it didn't look like it to me. Admittedly I've done a lot of multi-platform GUI work, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, but it just didn't "fit in" quite right. Qt seemed to suffer from the common problem where everything is just *slightly* the wrong size. You don't notice it until you see the application alongside others on the same platform, but once you do, it's one of those niggles that becomes an annoyance every time you use the application.

    IMHO the attacks against GNOME were pretty out of line too, to say the least..

  • Who would put a picture of a Qt coder in their screenshot? Where's their pictures of Natalie Portman? Sheesh.
  • I have used designer and it is by far the most convenient gui design utitity to date. It does not requtire that you use any particular toolkit or language. It outputs an xml description of the widget/dialog that you have designed and you can then have a seperate program(uic) output a c++ header and source file. You could easily create a program that outputs source in (enter your toolkit/lanuage here). It doesn't try to control your whole application so you can easily use it on existing applications. It is a very nice piece of OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.

    For all of you out there that like to complain, why don't you head on over to sourceforge and start a new project(toolkit, language, maybe OS) because I'm sure you'll do everything just perfect.
  • by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Saturday August 19, 2000 @11:54PM (#842046) Journal
    You'll see some suspicious dissing of Gnome on that screenshots page. Please understand that this is a statement of Trolltechs, not of KDEs. The KDE guys themselves (on their mailing lists) reacted to the dissing.
    --
  • We do not emulate Gnome's slow repaints and flicker, though.

    This statement deeply saddens me. I thought the whole point here was to have friendly competition between two desktop environments. As one of the major representatives for the KDE movement, Trolltech should show a little more professionalism than this.

    Also, although I am not a GNOME developer, I find the claim that the GNOME Control Center is a clone of the KDE Control Center somewhat unnecessary. It seems Trolltech can not leave the KDE / GNOME debate alone even when talking about a developer tool that is supposed to work on any desktop environment.

  • by mw ( 16262 ) on Sunday August 20, 2000 @01:27AM (#842048)
    It's a really nice tool. Having programmed both Qt and GTK, I prefer Qt. It's a well thought, compact library, truly multi-platform (unfortunatly, Mac is still missing). GTK is a real hacker's library, not well thought, not easily extendible (compared to Qt, try to modify widget behaviour in Qt and try the same in GTK and you know what I mean). GTK has really bad keyboard handling, and has slow themeing.

    I've to admit that the real advantage of GTK is that it's C-based, so it's much easier to do language binding. GTK has really a lot of support for alternate languages like ADA, Eiffel and such, but the applications implemented in these languages are still missing, so most of the language bindings are for now more a proof of concept.

    For Open-Source software Qt is the way to go (easier to program), for closed software development GTK is the choice (because it's LGPL and free of charge for proprietary software) if you don't expect to get to get any money for your GTK program. Otherwise, Qt is still better because it will save valuable hours of programming time compared to GTK. Remember, the license costs of Qt include one year of free support, where can you get that for GTK?

  • by Anonymous Coward
    There was one, originally, but Apple threatened to sue because they claim that only Apple has the right to show screenshots of unreleased tools for MacOS. So Trolltech pulled it.
  • Then again, what do you expect from a company that calls itself Troll-Tech?
  • The designer is under the GPL!!! What more do you want?!?
  • Yes it is sad that KDE people must bash GNOME in this childish way:

    "If Gnome is still too advanced for your taste,
    you might want to run plain old Motif"

    "We do not emulate Gnome's slow repaints and flicker, though."

    This took away all my respect on KDE(along with Kurt KDE letter). I hope this is not the view of all KDE developers.
    This is sad becuase some KDE applications are really good like kppp.
  • What in the world is world with taking code from one open source project to another? I thought that was one of the big points of open source software. If you don't like what is written, you take what you do like, and use it however you would like to.
  • Yes it is still a flame.

    For example. If I were to call you a cum loving queer-ass-bandit and it were `true`, I would still be generally regarded to be inciting violent responses. If I called you a `Gay Man` ("GM for short, great cars those GM's" - Micheal Moore) then that would be stating the facts without being bitchy about it and thus would not be a troll.

    In this case it wasn't true in the slightest what they said about Gnome. It's not slower at screen redraws than KDE. Lying about this (or saying this without any facts or trials to back up the statement) and probably knowing full-well the possible reaction of people (IE, if you get called a paedophile, and you're not, you shouldn't make jokes about raping kids) then this probably did cause an inflamatory reaction as seen here in these slashdot posts.

    -- CmDRtaco

  • $2.4k for a single license? No thanks, I'll stick with Glade...

    -------------
  • I think you are miss understanding the point of the GPL. You can design closed-source programs for free with GPL'd Qt Designer, but you must pay ("sponser Qt development") to use Qt for closed source programs.

    The GPL only covers derived work from the program, not output of a program (according to RMS and others). Otherwise, everytime I used a GPL'd program to write a text file (like to write a book) I would be forced to GPL. That is so insane it would never happen. Of course a clarification would be nice, but almost every court would see it that way.
  • by Tack ( 4642 )

    IMHO the attacks against GNOME were pretty out of line too, to say the least..

    What attacks on GNOME?

    Jason.

  • >Nope, but eazel can sell their services from a
    >much better position than other competing
    >companies with their filemanager being default --
    >which is unfair to say the least ...

    They are developing but one component of the desktop.

    Now call me silly, but I find the distributions MUCH more likely to be who end-users turn to for support. Or even OEMS.

    And as the source is GPLed, the folks at Eazel do not have the "its us or nothing" for support even on the back-end of the support structure.

    Unlike traditional multi-tier support, where end users have contracts with VARs and ISVs, who have contracts with distribution, who have contracts with the vendor, it is far from unlikely to short circuit this process and just do support directly for the product internally.

    >As forking would mean coding against dozens of
    >other company-driven developers forking only
    >works in theory. Nobody except for your mom would
    >be interested in your fork ...

    And this is different from Open Source development how?

    The fact of the matter, the only reason there would be to fork would be if the maintainer (be it person or company) was doing an inadequate job. This is no different that Open source.

    >Hint: Then why are core-developers on the
    >gnome-foundation-mailinglist so concerned on
    >lacking company-independent developers right
    >now???????

    Odd, I read it as a discussion as how to safeguard against it in the future. Kind of like buying health insurance even though you're not currently sick.

    Take note of the charter:

    "The membership will be populated with all the
    consenting members of the gnome-hackers mailing
    list, people holding CVS accounts, and anyone
    else who speaks out and wants to join when
    asked."

    So far I haven't seen any major concern on the main Gnome lists. Most of it has been KDE advocates slinging around rumours of Gnome being commercialized, overhyped, yadda yadda yadda.

    Aside from that, about the only thing I've seen on the lists are complaints about press releases from some of the new memers and articles not making it clear that the community *is* very much a part of the foundation.

    >BTW: you should stop reading those Q&A-FAQs. They
    >are bad for your health:

    BTW: you should stop making completely ad hominum arguments. They're bad for your credibility.
  • You have to let both the market and the community sort these issues out by themselves. Flaming doesn't accomplish that goal any sooner. As a KDE-turned-GNOME user, I happen to agree with you, but comments like the above only serve to get people's dander up and stretch the debate out even longer.
    --
  • From the trolltech website:
    "Please note that the Qt Free Edition is an X11-only library. Qt for Microsoft Windows is only available in the Professional Edition."
    Cost of Qt for windows: $ 1,550

    I don't think the average freeware developer is about to shell out that much money. I wouldn't, if I could program anything worth releasing.

    Alex Magidow
  • Sheesh, I am glad they allayed my fears about what it would look like under WIN2000. God forbid that it offend my GUI sensibility.
  • This is a wonderful piece of work. It integrates with GNOME, KDE, IRIX, CDE and who knows what else. I hope KDE continues this trend and integrates with all the above environments. Just think, if KDE could integrate with GNOME like that... it would kill many objections.

    Qt Designer is a truly wonderful application for a wonderful library. It's even GPL although there's no reason for the GNOMEs to port this too since it's already integrated with GNOME, they may want to make it generate GTK C code as an option.
  • When is Trooltech going to created a Mac OS port?
  • What I think is rather sad is that they have failed to provide a way to port Qt apps easily to Windows platforms. Ya, in an ideal world, we'd all use linux, but for some of us, especially with small hard drives on family computers, are unable to install a copy.

    I think that trolltech, by selling the windows version for a hefty fee, is sabotaging the open source/cross platform movement. Many wonderful apps are being designed in Qt, many/most of them freeware. However, these apps are never going to make it to windows because hobbiest programmers aren't going to shell out $2000 just to port their program to another platform.

    IMHO, selling the windows version of Qt for such an high price is a disservice to the freeware community.

    Alex Magidow
  • by pcbob ( 67069 ) on Saturday August 19, 2000 @11:09PM (#842065) Homepage
    Am I the only one who thinks that all the "multi platform" (SUN, SGI, Motif) screenshots are actually done on Linux with apropriate Enlightenment themes? Except for Win2K, maybe :)
    ---
  • where can I get Qt Designer?
  • Ho please get off your cross, if you truly read the GNOME posts, you'd see that it's full of "Qt rules, GNOME is bloated" propaganda.

    One thing I noticed though is that when GNOME didn't have as much attention, most KDE folks were welcoming the competition and at the same time claiming that KDE is becoming a UNIX desktop standard. But now that the tables have turned, I expect more whiners complaining in the threads. Don't be surprised if this get moderated down.

    You're right, there's nothing wrong with TrollTech charging for their toolkit but some of us like to think that it's better not to be charged when we develop commercial software to a desktop's native toolkit. GNOME is that choice.

  • Anonymous. If TrollTech were a user-based, not-for-profit organization, and the joke had been made somewhere on a message board, I'd probably take it with a grain of salt.

    But this showed up ON THEIR WEBSITE. The public face that they turn to the web each and every second of the day. I'm sorry, but some modicum of professionalism, not political correctness, should be maintained. If they want to laugh behind their hands, fine by me. I have zero problems with that. When they want to take a childish, and completely public slap at a competitior, that's something else.

    So the child who, instead of identifying a problem and working towards a constructive resoloution, sits there and and makes fun of something, in a public place, should be rewarded? Sorry. I don't see it that way. You don't reward someone for poor social skills.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • but I'm just as interested in how big the memory footprint is, and how many cpu cycles it consumes while looping away. I only have a MERE 64mb of ram in my aging celeron 333, after all.

    Speaking of such, does anyone know of anyplace with stats on just how many resources these "next-gen" interfaces use?
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • If you are a student, your college can get a free site license for all the Trolltech software.
  • It's running on KDE and on Gnome. Am I naive beyond belief, or does this indicate that it's going to benefit both parties? It'd be wonderful if an app could use a single forms layout database/file/record/XML to create a GUI for all the platforms they've demonstrated.

    Gahd. Imagine. The core of your application would be exactly the same on all platforms. Your forms design data would be the same. The only thing that changes is the render engine or interpreter.


    --
  • Why can't Linux people come to an agreement about toolkits, desktop environments, etc. I think that one of the reasons why Linux is so unintuitive to some is because the user interface changes every 5 minutes!@
  • >BUT: Eazel, HelixCode and Sun have put themselves
    >into keypositions by developing the
    >standard-gnome-filemanager, the
    >standard-gnome-office and the
    >standard-gnome-pim.

    Yes, Eazel gave us a new filemanager.

    Does this prevent us from using other ones? Of course not, its method of integration is through the standard drag-and-drop and embedding mechanisms.

    Does this prevent us from forking the code in the future if need be? Of course not, its GPL.

    Yes, Sun is giving us a free office suite.

    Does this prevent us from using other ones? Of course not.

    Does this prevent us from forking the code in the future if need be? Of course not.

    Does this prevent us from using portions of their office suite with other components? Of course not, as they are publshing the details of their file formats and using the standard methods for integration under Gnome.

    Yes, HelixCode is giving us a groupware product.
    But they were doing that before they even formed the company, and the people who were working on it still are. They're just being paid.

    Does this prevent us from using other products? No, of course.

    Does this prevent us from forking the code if necessary? No, of course not, it's GPL.

    Does this prevent us from using portions of their groupware with other products? No, of course not. They are using standard libraries, drag-and-drop, embedding, protocals, etc.

    And regardless of all that, the FRAMEWORK of Gnome is in the hands of developers from all of these companies, as well as independent developers and those working at Redhat.

    We are not in danger of vendor lock-in, we are not in danger of vendor control, we are not in danger period.

    >Anyone looked at the mailinglists of gnumeric and
    >abiword? -- These projects are obviously dying
    >already ;(

    I count 24 new entries in the ChangeLog for gnumeric this month, and 92 new commits to Abiword. How is this dying?

    Oh, and BTW, Gnumeric was one of the first projects Helix backed. I don't see how their rise to a key position can endanger one of their own products.

    And beyond even that, the details of the Gnome office release are not out yet. For all we know, StarCalc may not even be part of the upcoming OpenOffice release.

    >By occupying the core-positions these companies
    >are obviously destroying the developer
    >infrastructure that made sure that even
    >independent developers can influence the
    >development of such projects significantly.

    Hint, the bulk of the independent developers are still there. A lot of them are just being paid for it now.

    Hint, look at the membership of the Gnome Foundation. It's still largely independent developers.

  • by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Sunday August 20, 2000 @12:12AM (#842074) Homepage
    For those that did not know: KDevelop has has a design tool for quite some time. As far back as last year at .4 (can't remember farther). Granted it didn't do as many features as this did, but it was very good and I have used it (the designer and KDevelop) for over a dozen projects. I looked at Glade at the time to see how good it was and it seemed to be missing things that the KDevelop designer had. Granted that could be different now. For those that missed it TrollTech was deminstrating it at LinuxExpo. I had heard of it before, but didn't have a chance to test it out. I played around on it for a few mintues at the expo. I was quite surprised and when I start my next project will use it. I am sure that I will save quite a bit of time off of development using it. I also took a look at the code that it spits out the end. Formatted nicly even with comments so after I can go in and edit to my hearts content. Over all it is a nice addition to my toolbelt.
  • I know this. It was a joke. A pun. An attempt to bring a little humor into our otherwise bleak and depressing lives.
  • This page isn't done by KDE people. This page is done by Trolltech. In fact, on the KDE development mailing lists people didn't liked this writing also.
    Hope that it will restore your respect to the KDE.
  • It's not "the KDE people" who did it. It some immature person over at TT who built the page and did the screenshots.

    From what I understand, many of the people actually working on KDE are more than a bit appalled by this sort of childish backbiting.

    It's sad that someone at TT STILL doesn't get the concept that the best way to advertise a product is NOT to rip on friendly competitiors.

    About the only bright spot is that this attitude isn't reflective of the KDE community as a whole.

    As my father said. It takes all kinds...Conrad Stargard/Leo Frankowski


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • As long as you have compatibility between Desktop Environments, you do not need an agreement. I'll give you an example: You can run your KDE Applets on the Gnome toolbar. It's even an advantage not to have always the same toolkits and Desktop environments, because the user/customer can choose the Desktop he likes, without having the need of thinking about compatibility.
  • Presumably as a result of the flaming here, they've removed that statement from the web page.

    TWM forever :-)...
  • Just for grins, I decided to browse the rest of the site and get a price on it. At about $1500 for an annual license, this toolkit is pretty much out of reach for students, hobbiest, and quite a few open source programmers.

    It appears to be a super tool. But at this price, it easily exceeds the cost of Visual Studio, CodeWarrior, etc. I'm sticking with Glide and other open source environments. Heck, I may even be able to afford to contribute to a project now and then.

    Dave
  • by Anonymous Coward
    > A single company governs its base library QT. (GTK is GPL?ed)

    Well first of all with the core-Gtk-developers being hired by redhat the situation isn't much different on the other side.
    BUT: Creating a toolkit doesn't have much impact on the way the desktop being built on it evolves. (Except for ease of programming and speed).
    KDE doesn't need to take all of the things Trolltech develops: Trolltech developed a filedialog that was meant to be used in KDE. Unfortunately KDE decided to take another filedialog for KDE instead. So much on the influence Trolltech has on KDE ...

    BUT: Eazel, HelixCode and Sun have put themselves into keypositions by developing the standard-gnome-filemanager, the standard-gnome-office and the standard-gnome-pim.
    According to the high number of developers they have hired they can easily decide how Gnome will develop in the future :-(
    Forking is of course possible in theory (as everything is GPLed) but who will take notice of it? Best proof: Who will ship the non-Helix-Gnome-version soon? Anyone looked at the mailinglists of gnumeric and abiword? -- These projects are obviously dying already ;(
    By occupying the core-positions these companies are obviously destroying the developer-infrastructure that made sure that even independent developers can influence the development of such projects significantly.

  • Where did you make your Master in economics?

    If GNOME fails, Trolltech loses a platform on
    which qt based apps are running.

    So their commercial interest is of course
    to have as many GUI environments existing
    as possible.

    And have their library and tools running on as
    many as possible.

    The qt programmers are just professionals
    doing their job right, in building nearly
    perfect software.

    Regards,
    angel'o'sphere

    BTW: if GNOME repaints slow and flickers
    and TT teases you about that why does this not
    encourage you to improve GNOME? Truth is Truth
    and does not need an excuse!
  • What he means it that Linux desktop apps are just imitating what Windows did five or more years ago.

    Then he's simply wrong. Did WIndows make use of XML five or more years ago ? By making such absurd claims, he provides a compelling case -- that he is ignorant.

    Miguel is an open admirer or Windows,

    Wrong. He is an open admirer of certain technologies that Microsoft have developed for use on the Windows platform.

    and Kde has been trying to look just like Windows from day one.

    KDE looks like many things, and Windows is only one of those things. If it had been "trying to look like windows", they would have left out obviously UNIX-centric features like virtual desktops. Again, you make a laughably false claim.

    MS will have C#

    So what ? Today, it's vapour. Tomorrow, it will still lack maturity. C# will not make a substantial impact for some time.

    while you guys are still struggling to get Sun company's java working right on linux.

    Are you trying to prove your ignorance ? Java already "works right" on Linux.

    Then, when the entire internet is based around .NET

    Unless ".NET" is an open platform, this won't happen any time soon.

    Then VA company will go out of business and so will slashdot.

    You MS drones have been predicting the "death" of UNIX for over 10 years, and we're still waiting for it.

    YOu may be able to find a job coding visual basic somewhere after that.

    My language of choice is C++, and I don't forsee a shortage of C++ jobs any time soon. What, do you think they're going to throw away all their C++ code tomorrow ? They haven't even got rid of COBOL and FORTRAN yet ...

  • ask me how long I've had Glide to design interfaces for GTK+

    Why even bother asking ? If you were a developer, and not a troll, you'd know it was "glade" (unless you're really using 3dfx's proprietary API to design user interfaces ).

    There are lusers in both camps, and hey, it looks like you're one of them.

  • How 'bout this. You shut up, and I continue to use KDE, a thinner, faster, less crappy DE, 'k?
  • I think you're the one who needs to "get a life". The fact that it's a forms designer doesn't mean that it's visual basic, any more than it's "oracle", "visual C++", or anything else. And the fact that it's announced on slashdot does not mean that it's the first of it's kind available for Linux ( or even for Qt ).

  • That's competition. This page was from TT, and it's there choice. Like all the Linux commercials making fun of BillG are in good taste? Lastly, it IS true. GNOME DOES have slower repaints than KDE.
  • by wocky ( 17453 )
    They've revised the web page to remove them since this story was posted.
  • When did debian become the community standard?.
  • Not quite. Yes it runs on Gnome, CDE and KDE, but it's all using qt. you can see this by the slight bitchiness they put in about gnome (the bit about flickering and slow repaints).

    TBH, with a well setup system, in the end it *all* goes down to the backend stuff - since gtk and qt look broadly the same. Still needs some work on consistency...
  • Picky technical point, but it would have to be C++ code. As far as I know Qt doesn't have a C library, only C++.
  • i agree that it would be better if the trolls licensed Qt under LGPL or BSD, but i can understand their reasons for not doing it.

    GTK+ has better language bindings, that's true. It's easier to wrap a c library to other languages than a c++ one. But for *me* personally, working in c++, Qt is a better choice. I just dislike the feel of GTK+. It feels like a bad kludge trying to fit an object model into a language that doesnt support it. Qt OTOH feels designed, clean and easy to work with. (GTK also give me horrible flashbacks of cobol fingers with_the_really_long_function_names()) :)

    :pointless rant:
    I get the feeling that the traditional FSF crowd dislike KDE/Qt because it's developed by a different group of people than gnome (read: europeans vs americans) There's a witch hunt around KDE/Qt that never seem to stop. (ok, the original license gripe was a real problem, but IMHO that's fixed now). A lot of other programs have conflicting licenses that cause problems, but there's no will (mostly among redhat and debian) to work with the KDE crowd to solve it. For example, debian redistributes pine in a easy to compile source package, even though they can't legally distribute as a binary. Why not do the same with KDE?

    If there's a will, there's a way. But some people don't seem to be happy until KDE/Qt is dead and buried.
    :/pointless rant:

    Programming with Qt is *nice*. :)

    Phew. I'm done. Flame away, i'm wearing my asbestos underwear.

    -henrik
  • Need I say more?
  • I didn't like the taste of that... to bitter...
  • Debian 3.0? That should only be a few years away given Debian's version numbering scheme. Especially since 2.2r0 just finally made it out, and Debian versions seem to have an extremely long lifetime.

    Seriously, though. I have to wonder how much this "foundation" will help given the fact it's staffed by members of a lot of very large companies.

    Besides, if I remember correctly, there was a group that existed for a while that was trying to make a GPL'ed QT clone.. After TrollTech freed up the license terms to their "free" version of QT, interest died down. Although I'd prefer if it were a little more "free" (I think a BSD-style license would be most applicable to something like this), but Trolltech wants to protect their "professional" edition and the customers they've sold this product to. It's fine and dandy to say "make money from services", except for the fact this hasn't really made money for any single Linux company yet.

    KDE and Gnome have both evolved in similar directions, and I honestly don't understand this hostility between them. KDE on one hand, incorporates a nearly complete standards-compliant web browser, including JavaScript, etc. Gnome, on the other hand, has always seemed to try to be customizable above all else.

  • >1. Its only one language C++ (gnome is over 10).

    Wrong. I know of Python and C bindings for Qt. There are probably others aswell. Sorry, don't have an URL nearby. But they're not hard to find.

    >2. A single company governs its base library QT. >(GTK is GPL?ed)

    isn't GTK LGPLed? In any case, Qt is just as free and open as mozilla for example. Troll tech can *never* make Qt free edition proprietary, even if they got bought out by microsoft.

    >3. Its licenses still doesn?t meet the community >standard?s. (GNOME 2.0 and StarOffice are both >going to be in Debian 3.0, I wonder if KDE will >make it. )

    The QPL (qt license) is a certified Open Source license, even RMS agrees with that. The problem is that it's GPL incompatible (according to some). That's why debian doesn't link KDE (GPLed) and Qt (QPL) together and distribute it. Qt itself is already in the debian archives.

    -henrik
  • I have no objection to humour; if this was a KDE page, I wouldn't mind. What I mind is that TrollTech is a for-profit organization, and thus has a monetary inerest in the failure of GNOME (as this would promote the use of KDE, thus widening the market for Qt apps).

  • One thing to keep in mind is that Troll Tech is a company who sells a product (Qt commercial version costs $). Their attacks against GNOME may be a little inflamatory, but remember--they've got to sell a product and compete with gtk+, which is free.

    gtk+ 1.4 will have the infrastructure to offer good cross platform support and has unicode (with pango). In other words, it's only a matter of time before gtk+ has the same features as Qt 2.x.
  • What you call flaming and bashing, others call free expression. I haven't seen many comments claiming Trolltech is a tyrannical company for charging for their software. Trolltech has a right to do what they want as a company. But people also have a right to express their distaste for the QT license.

    To some people, it's all about technical merits. I won't doubt that KDE and Qt are more developed and more stable than GNOME. But for other people, the extra freedom that GNOME provides is more important.

    Trolltech has a right to be adamant about their QPL license, and slashdot posters have a right to express their disapproval of it. And as often as they want to. That's what free speech and slashdot are about.

    And, I don't think such "flames" turn developers away from Linux. Trolltech, and other companies, are there to make a living for their employees. They're not there are as a charity organization surviving on good will emanating from slashdot.

    Trolltech knows that the set of slashdot commenters doesn't equate with the linux community. Do you think Windows and Mac users don't express their negative opinions on their boards? Anybody can post a comment on slashdot, and that doesn't mean that person's comment is worth anything. Companies know that.

    At least Trolltech is being made to know what the negative opinions are. It's better than them hearing nothing bad, and then wondering why their acceptance isn't as high as they expect it to be.
  • This is going to get moderated down ...
    It seems that it has become extremely fashionable to criticize every single detail of whatever might not be absolutely politically correct about QT and KDE. On the other hand, whatever GNOME does is welcomed, even if it is, to say the least, as inflammatory as any of the KDE/Trolltech comments (e.g. Icaza's Unix sucks comments).

    Trolltech is a software company that has to make money to survive. And they are writing fairly decent software for that, and provide it for free for non-commercial applications. All they get in return (from the slashdot crowd) is flames. Don't you think that this will make any other company think twice before they provide something for free for Open Source development?

    As for the Gnome `dissing': Trolltech already took it off the website in no time. Please read before posting.

    As for QT designer: sure there's more toolkits available (Kylix, KDevelop, etc.). But, hey, what's so bad about having yet another one? And for commercial development, 2.5k$ is nothing. A good coder costs heaps more than that (for instance MATLAB, a numerical simulations environment costs $10k for industry and $1k for universities).

    So stop complaining and start coding if you want to make a point.

  • I believe Qt designer spits out C code, not some high level XML representation of the interface, so you're SOL there! :-(

    Perhaps the best way to implement what you're after would be to implement a "libqtglade" that instantiates glade interfaces in Qt rather than GTK+ as libglade does.
  • Among other things, *he* talks about pros and cons

    umm... I think Mosfet is a Girl! (notice the pic at the lower section of the site)


  • Shouldn't a story entitled "Screenshots of Qt Designer" have a bunch of pictures of the people who wrote Qt? At least, that's what I was expecting....
  • Do you know anything about way X works ? Or do you mean that Troll will attempt to have Qt build in xlib ?
  • Still for Linux, I think the nicest thing to make my life easier would be debugging tools as good as those produced by a certain Large Nameless Entity.

    You mean... The Blue Screen Of Death?

    --

  • Actually, Mosfet (AKA Daniel M. Duley) is male.
  • Personally, I find this to be quite an exciting tool, but unfortunately I'm in the position where the app I want to port is written in Delphi on Windows ... so I'm waiting for Kylix.

    Now, I've considered a re-write using wxWindows, and am now also having another good look at Qt, but there's one thing that would *really* swing me in Qt's direction: MacOS 8/9 *and/or* MacOS X support.

    Anyone got any details on whether Qt is headed in that direction?
  • I've noticed a lot of posts on this posting and others that Trolltech is greedy to charge commercial developers for their library. Nothing could be further from the truth. Commercial developers would much rather use a commercial library for commercial development any day.

    First of all, if you aren't making enough money to pay your suppliers, you shouldn't be doing closed-source development anyway. Commercial companies are in busniess to make a profit and will understand when their suppliers do too. A rule of business is that you only want to work with partners who are profitable - it guarantees they won't go out of business and leave you with no support.

    Second, if you need a feature implemented in the next version, you can come at them with the "we're your customer" perspective. With open source tools, the developers are often busy adding in their own bells and whistles, and if they don't want to implement your feature, than you have to spend your own time and money to do it yourself.

    Third, Open source development is usually not done to a schedule. I.e. "it's ready when it's ready". But commercial companies have to ship to a schedule they've given to their customers, and they take the heat whether or not a slip was due to a supplier. Much better to work with a supplier that can meet a deadline.

    Finally, the QPL is much better suited for commerical development than the LGPL. The LGPL states that to statically link with the library, your application can't even be commercial. It could even be interpreted that in order to distribute the library together with your app, your whole app has to be GPL'd. Not good if you want a non-Linux port and the library doesn't exist on all your target platforms. Without an established case history to solidify the legal meaning of the LGPL, what commercial developer would want to risk their precious intellectual-property on an untested license? At least with the QPL, you know that your closed-source application can always stay closed-source unless/until you decide to open-source it.

    Closed-source/commercial developers know all of this already. The pro-Gtk comments seem to come mostly from people who have only done open source development.
  • Oh really ? It still beats standard Linux desktop with tons of apps using completely different toolkits.
  • As for the ``slow repaints and flicker'' I believe the next release of GTK will have double-buffered graphics with fast repaints and no flicker.

    --Ben

  • (Near the bottom of the GNOME shot)
    "We do not emulate Gnome's slow repaints and flicker, though."

    Heh.

    -K

    .~.
    /V\
    // \\
    /( )\
    8=^`=`^=D
  • Remember, the license costs of Qt include one year of free support, where can you get that for GTK?

    Um, the gtk lists? Gtk.org?
  • by BJH ( 11355 ) on Saturday August 19, 2000 @11:34PM (#842114)
    It seems even TrollTech is getting in on the GNOME bashing. I like both GNOME and KDE, but really, that's not the sort of thing I expect to see on a corporate home page. How about a little professionalism, guys?

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