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Encyclopedia > Qt (toolkit)

Qt
The Qt designer used for GUI designing
The Qt designer used for GUI designing
Developer: Trolltech
Latest release: 4.3.1 / August 7, 2007
OS: Cross-platform
Genre: Development Library
License: GPL, Proprietary, QPL
Website: Qt Homepage

Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of GUI programs and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers. Qt is most notably used in KDE, the web browser Opera, Google Earth, Skype, Qtopia and OPIE. It is produced by the Norwegian company Trolltech. Trolltech insiders pronounce Qt as "cute"[1]. Image File history File links Qt_logo. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1000x730, 117 KB) Note: if the screenshot shows any work that is not a direct result of the program code itself, such as a text or graphics that are not part of the program, the license for that work must be... Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. ... Trolltech (formerly known as Quasar Technologies) is a computer software company from Oslo, Norway. ... A software release is the distribution, whether public or private, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product. ... is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... // An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer. ... A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ... Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function, type, or field of use. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... It has been suggested that closed source be merged into this article or section. ... The Q Public License (QPL) is a non-copyleft free software license created by Trolltech for its free edition of the Qt toolkit. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Qt or QT may stand for: QuickTime a multimedia technology from Apple Computer A quart, a measure of volume within traditional systems of units, equal to 2 pints A quarter, a unit of mass in Imperial units, equal to 2 stones or a quarter of a long hundredweight; one quarter... A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ... “GUI” redirects here. ... KDE (K Desktop Environment) (IPA: ) is a free software project which aims to be a powerful system for an easy-to-use desktop environment. ... Opera is a cross-platform web browser and Internet suite which handles common Internet-related tasks including visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting online, viewing Widgets, downloading BitTorrents, and reading Newsfeeds. ... Google Earth is a virtual globe program that was originally called Earth Viewer and was created by Keyhole, Inc. ... Skype (IPA pronunciation: , rhymes with type) is a software program created by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. ... Screenshot of Qtopia Pdas Launcher Qtopia is Trolltechs application platform for Embedded Linux-based PDAs, mobile phones, web pads, and other mobile computing devices. ... OPIE (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment) is a completely open source based graphical user interface for PDAs and other devices running Linux. ... Trolltech (formerly known as Quasar Technologies) is a computer software company from Oslo, Norway. ...


Qt uses C++ with several non-standard extensions implemented by an additional pre-processor that generates standard C++ code before compilation. Qt can also be used in several other programming languages; bindings exist for Python (PyQt), Ruby (RubyQt), PHP (PHP-Qt), Pascal, C#[2], Perl and Java[3]. It runs on all major platforms, and has extensive internationalization support. Non-GUI features include SQL database access, XML parsing, thread management, and a unified cross-platform API for file handling. C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose programming language with high-level and low-level capabilities. ... In computing, a binding from a language to a library or OS service is an API providing that service in the language. ... Python is a high-level programming language first released by Guido van Rossum in 1991. ... PyQt is the Python binding of the GUI toolkit Qt. ... Ruby is a reflective, dynamic, object-oriented programming language. ... For other uses, see PHP (disambiguation). ... Pascal is a structured imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Perl Programming Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ... “Java language” redirects here. ... Internationalization and localization are means of adapting products such as publications or software for non-native environments, especially other nations and cultures. ... SQL (IPA: or IPA: ), commonly expanded as Structured Query Language, is a computer language designed for the retrieval and management of data in relational database management systems, database schema creation and modification, and database object access control management. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language. ... For the form of code consisting entirely of subroutine calls, see Threaded code. ... API and Api redirect here. ...

Contents

Varieties

Qt is released by Trolltech on the following platforms:

There are four editions of Qt available on each of these platforms, namely: “X11” redirects here. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... Mac OS X (IPA: ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... Windows redirects here. ... Look up Personal digital assistant in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A Sony Ericsson Smartphone (Model P910i) Look up smartphone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about the Java island. ...

  • Qt Console — edition for non-GUI development.
  • Qt Desktop Light — entry level GUI edition, stripped of network and database support.
  • Qt Desktop — complete edition.
  • Qt Open Source Edition — "complete" edition, with some exceptions[4], for free software/open source developers.

Since version 4, Qt has been available under a dual license, the GPL and a proprietary commercial license on all supported platforms including Windows. The commercial license allows the final application to be licensed under various free software/open source licenses such as the LGPL or the Artistic License, or a proprietary software license. This article is about free software as used in the sociopolitical free software movement; for non-free software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... Free software is software which grants recipients the freedom to modify and redistribute the software. ... An open-source license is a copyright license for computer software that makes the source code available under terms that allow for modification and royalty-free redistribution. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is an FSF approved Free Software license designed as a compromise between the GNU General Public License and simple permissive licenses such as the BSD license and the MIT License. ... The Artistic License is a software license used for certain free software packages, most notably the standard Perl implementation, most of CPAN modules and Parrot, which are dual-licensed under the Artistic License and the GNU General Public License (GPL). ... Proprietary software is software with restrictions on using, copying and modifying as enforced by the proprietor. ...


Proprietary commercial development requires the commercial license, and, unlike some open source software libraries, Qt is not licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and does not include a GPL linking exception. Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... Some free software projects, notably GNU Guile,[1] the run-time libraries of GNAT,[1] and GNU Classpath,[2] distribute code under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) but with an additional section known as the GPL linking exception. ...


All editions support a wide range of compilers, including the GCC C++ compiler. Official support for the Visual Studio suite [1] is, however, restricted to the proprietary Qt/Windows edition. The Q.../Free project has released several patches [2] which add support for Microsoft Visual Studio and Borland C++ Builder to the free software/open source version of Qt/Windows. The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ... Microsoft Visual Studio is Microsofts flagship software development product for computer programmers. ...


Current

Trolltech released Qt 4 on June 28, 2005 and introduced five new technologies in the framework: is the 179th day of the year (180th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

  • Tulip A set of template container classes.
  • Interview A model/view architecture for item views.
  • Arthur A 2D painting framework.
  • Scribe A Unicode text renderer with a public API for performing low-level text layout.
  • MainWindow A modern action-based main window, toolbar, menu, and docking architecture.

Qt 4.1, released on December 19, 2005, introduced integrated SVG Tiny support, a PDF backend to Qt's printing system, and a few other features. is the 353rd day of the year (354th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... SVG redirects here. ... “PDF” redirects here. ...


Qt 4.2, released on October 4, 2006, introduced Windows Vista support, introduced native CSS support for widget styling, as well as the QGraphicsView framework for efficient rendering of thousands of 2D objects onscreen, to replace Qt 3.x's QCanvas class. is the 277th day of the year (278th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ...


Qt 4.3, released on May 30, 2007, improved Windows Vista support, improved OpenGL engine, SVG file generation, added QtScript (ECMAScript scripting engine based on QSA).[5] is the 150th day of the year (151st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ... OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a standard specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. ... SVG is also the IATA code for Stavanger Airport, Sola in Norway. ... ECMAScript is a scripting programming language, standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification. ... Qt Script for Applications (QSA) is scripting engine, addon to Qt toolkit. ...


History

Haavard Nord and Eirik Chambe-Eng (the original developers of Qt and the CEO and President of Trolltech respectively) began development of "Qt" in 1991, three years before the company was incorporated as Quasar Technologies, then changed the name to Troll Tech, and then to Trolltech. Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ...


The toolkit was called Qt because the letter Q looked beautiful in Haavard's Emacs font, and "t" was inspired by Xt, the X toolkit. Look up Q, q in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about the text editor. ... Intrinsics (also known as Xt, for X toolkit) is a library used in the X Window System. ...


Controversy erupted around 1998 when it became clear that KDE was going to become one of the leading desktop environments for Linux. As KDE was based on Qt, many people in the free software movement worried that an essential piece of one of their major operating systems would be proprietary. Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... Information in this article or section has not been verified against sources and may not be reliable. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... The free software movement, also known as the free software philosophy, began in 1983 when Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project. ...


This gave rise to two efforts: the Harmony toolkit, which sought to duplicate the Qt Toolkit under a free software license, and the GNOME desktop, which intended to supplant KDE entirely. The GNOME Desktop uses the GTK+ toolkit, which was originally written for the GIMP, and primarily uses the C programming language. The Harmony toolkit is a never completed, free software toolkit that aimed to be API compatible with the (at the time, proprietary) Qt toolkit, but wanted to add functionality such as multi-threaded applications and pluggable themes. ... Free software is software which grants recipients the freedom to modify and redistribute the software. ... This article is about the mythical creature. ... GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is one of the two most popular widget toolkits for the X Window System for creating graphical user interfaces. ... The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor application with some support for vector graphics. ... Wikibooks has a book on the topic of C Programming The C programming language (often, just C) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for use on the Unix operating system. ...


Until version 1.45, source code for Qt was released under the FreeQt license — which was viewed as not compliant to the open source principle by the Open Source Initiative and the free software definition by Free Software Foundation, because while the source was available it did not allow the redistribution of modified versions. With the release of version 2.0 of the toolkit, the license was changed to the Q Public License (QPL), a free software license but one regarded by the Free Software Foundation as incompatible with the GPL. Compromises were sought between KDE and Trolltech wherein Qt would not be able to fall under a more restrictive license than the QPL, even if Trolltech was bought out or went bankrupt. This led to the creation of the KDE Free Qt foundation, which guarantees that Qt would fall under a BSD-style license should no free software/open source version of Qt be released during 12 months. The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software. ... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... The Q Public License (QPL) is a non-copyleft free software license created by Trolltech for its free edition of the Qt toolkit. ... This article is about free software as used in the sociopolitical free software movement; for non-free software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... The BSD daemon BSD licenses represent a family of permissive free software licenses. ...


The first two versions of Qt had only two flavours: Qt/X11 for Unix and Qt/Windows for the Windows platform. The Windows platform was only available under the proprietary license which meant free/open source applications written in Qt for X11 could not be ported to Windows without purchasing the QPL edition. In the end of 2001, Trolltech released Qt 3.0 which added support for the Mac OS X platform. The Mac OS X support was available only in the proprietary license, until June 2003, where Trolltech released Qt 3.2 with Mac OS X support available under the GPL.


In 2002 members of the KDE on Cygwin project began porting the GPL licensed Qt/X11 code base to Windows[6]. This was in response to Trolltech's refusal to license Qt/Windows under the GPL on the grounds that Windows was not a free software/open source platform[7][8]. The project achieved reasonable success although it never reached production quality. KDE on Cygwin is the port of Qt and KDE to Windows using Cygwin, the POSIX emulation layer for Windows, and the Cygwin XFree86 server. ...


This was resolved when Trolltech released Qt/Windows 4 under the GPL in June 2005. Qt 4 now supports the same set of platforms in the free software/open source editions as in the proprietary edition, so it is now possible to create GPL-licensed free/open source applications using Qt on all supported platforms.


Design

The innovation of Qt when it was first released relied on a few key concepts.


Complete abstraction of the GUI

Qt used to emulate the native look of its intended platforms, which occasionally led to slight discrepancies where that emulation wasn't perfect. Recent versions of Qt use the native APIs of the different platforms to draw the Qt controls, and so do not suffer from such issues.


Qt script for applications (QSA)

Qt Script for Applications is a cross-platform toolkit that allows developers to make their Qt/C++ applications scriptable using an interpreted scripting language: Qt Script (based on ECMAScript/JavaScript). Qt Script for Applications (QSA) is scripting engine, addon to Qt toolkit. ...


From Qt 4.3.0 onward, the scripting API [9], which is based on QSA [10] is integrated as core part of Qt and is no longer a separate library.


Meta object compiler

Known as the moc, this is a tool that is run on the sources of a Qt program prior to compiling it. The tool will generate "Meta Information" about the classes used in the program. This meta information is used by Qt to provide programming features not available in C++: The signal/slot system, introspection and asynchrone function calls. Signals and slots is a concept introduced in Qt by the moc. ... In computing, type introspection is a capability of some object-oriented programming languages to determine the type of an object at runtime. ...


The use of an additional tool has been criticized for making Qt programming different from pure C++ programming. In particular, the choice of an implementation based on macros has been criticized for its absence of type safety and pollution of the namespace. This is viewed by Trolltech as a necessary trade-off to provide introspection and the dynamically generated slot and signal mechanism.


Applications built using Qt

There are many programs built using the Qt toolkit, here are a few popular examples:

Adobe Photoshop Album is a software application by Adobe Systems designed to import, organize and edit digital photos, and allows quick and easy searching and sharing of entire photo collections. ... Doxygen is a documentation generator for C++, C, Java, Objective-C, Python, IDL (Corba and Microsoft flavors) and to some extent PHP, C#, D and ActionScript. ... Google Earth is a virtual globe program that was originally called Earth Viewer and was created by Keyhole, Inc. ... KDE (K Desktop Environment) (IPA: ) is a free software project which aims to be a powerful system for an easy-to-use desktop environment. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... kdelibs is a collection of libraries that provides frameworks and functionality for developers of KDE-compatible software. ... Illustration of an application which may use libvorbisfile. ... Amarok (pronounced Am A Rock) [2] is a free software music player for Linux and other varieties of Unix. ... K3b is a free software CD and DVD authoring application for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating systems designed for KDE. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD... KDevelop is a free IDE for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. ... Last. ... Motorola Inc. ... Opera is a cross-platform web browser and Internet suite which handles common Internet-related tasks including visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting online, viewing Widgets, downloading BitTorrents, and reading Newsfeeds. ... Scribus is a free, open source desktop publishing (DTP) application. ... Adobe InDesign CS2, one of many popular desktop publishing applications. ... Skype (IPA pronunciation: , rhymes with type) is a software program created by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. ... A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... how VoIP works A typical analog telephone adapter for connecting an ordinary phone to a VoIP network Ciscos implementation of VoIP - IP Phone Voice over Internet Protocol, also called VoIP, IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband is the routing of voice conversations over... The word Tora refers to different things: TORA -Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm Torah - the Five Books of Moses TOra - a database administration and development tool Temporally-ordered routing algorithm - an algorithm for routing data across Wireless Mesh Networks or Mobile ad-hoc networks. ... VirtualBox by InnoTek is an x86 virtualizer for Windows and Linux 32-bit hosts supporting Windows, Linux 2. ... xconfig is short for the xconfig target for the Linux Kernel Makefile. ... Amarok (formerly known as amaroK or AmaroK) is an audio player application for KDE, which is released independantly from the kmultimedia package, and away from the central release cycle of KDE. It is now thought to be the most popular KDE-based audio player because of its extensive feature...

References

  1. ^ Interview with Trolltech president Eirik Eng on dot.kde.org
  2. ^ The Qyoto / Kimono Project, a .Net and C# bindings for Qt
  3. ^ Qt Jambi, Java bindings for Qt from Trolltech
  4. ^ The ActiveQt class for ActiveX on Windows, for example, is not available in the Open Source Edition
  5. ^ Trolltech: What’s New in Qt 4.3
  6. ^ Q../Windows Edition history, 5 June 2006
  7. ^ E-mail to the kde-cygwin mailing list by Chris January, 4 February 2003
  8. ^ Qt Non-commercial FAQ, 5 October 2003
  9. ^ http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qtscript.html
  10. ^ http://doc.trolltech.com/qsa-1.2.2/
  11. ^ TOra uses the Qt library

ActiveX is a series of high-level, Internet/Intranet technologies Microsoft introduced in late 1990s. ...

See also

Image File history File links Free_Software_Portal_Logo. ... In computer programming, widget toolkits (or GUI toolkits) are sets of basic building units for graphical user interfaces. ... // The Mac OS toolbox, or Macintosh APIs, formerly located in ROM, but in new world Macs, on disk. ... Screenshot of an application that uses the Open Motif toolkit Motif is a widget toolkit for building graphical user interfaces under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. ... In computing, wxWidgets (formerly known as wxWindows[1]) is a widget toolkit intended to create graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform application. ... GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is one of the two most popular widget toolkits for the X Window System for creating graphical user interfaces. ... The Fast, Light Toolkit (generally pronounced fulltick) is a cross-platform GUI library, developed by Bill Spitzak and others. ... The FOX toolkit is an open source, cross-platform widget toolkit, that is, a library of basic elements for building a graphical user interface (GUI). ... The Visual Component Framework (VCF) is an open source project for development under Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh that is distributed under the BSD license. ... Juce is an open source, cross-platform C++ application framework, used for the development of GUI applications and plug-ins. ...

External links

Wikibooks X Windows Programming has a page on the topic of

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