Re: KDE & Companies: Ask Trolltech Anything

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Re: KDE & Companies: Ask Trolltech Anything
by Robert on Saturday 07/Jul/2001, @22:53

Hello,

A few questions:

1. What is Trolltechs position on the full C++ standard? Eg do you advocate the use of all aspects of the STL, and if so, are future versions of QT going to be based around the STL?

2. Further to this, are there plans to get the signal/slot mechanism of moc into the C++ standard, or do you feel a preprocessor is a fully satisfactory solution?

3. What are your plans for language bindings?
ATM, we have PyQT, a perl binding I think, and C bindings in progress. Do you have any plans to adopt an "automatic" binding approach, ala COMs IDispatch or Corba DII? Also what is your response to the claim that it is hard to wrap C++ in other languages?

4. Is the KDE/Qt divide ever frustrating? When a good technology arrives in KDE, do you sometimes wish to deliver it to all your Qt customers, but find that you must reimplement it, due to licensing or technoloy issues? As an example, database access in Qt/KDE seems to be in a state of flux.

5. QTE has raised some hackles in the X camp. Could you explain why you think it is necessary, given that embedded machines are getting more powerful every day, and it is really no harder to re-engineer an X app, say a QT-x11 or GTK app, for a small display than moving a QT-x11 app to QTE?

6. Displays are getting bigger, and screen elements are getting lost - eg icons must now be produced in multiple sizes. People also want to use things on smaller screens - eg the ipaq. Are there any plans to make Qt pixel independent, like Fresco or Berlin?

7. X11 has proven to be a long lasting solution for the desktop window system. What possible extensions (if any) would be useful to you in creating QT? Or do you feel that a new desktop window system would be a better solution?

8. Given the plethora of toolkits for X11, what initiatives will Trolltech be taking in order to maintain a consistent desktop? Eg formulating a good common theme format, a common widget rendering layer or just trying to ignore other toolkits?

Phew! Anyway, some of these questions may not reflect my actual position - but I tried to think of as many issues as I could ;-)
Sorry if the questions were not meant to be technical ...

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Re: KDE & Companies: Ask Trolltech Anything
by KDE User on Saturday 07/Jul/2001, @23:07

No need to apologize, these are some great questions! :)

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Re: KDE & Companies: Ask Trolltech Anything
by adam on Monday 09/Jul/2001, @10:14

Regarding #6. I have beeen wondering if it would make sence or even be possible to have screen elements be defined as vector graphics rather then raster (i.e. bitmaped). Then icons and other elements could be scaled cleanly.

--adam

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Re: KDE & Companies: Ask Trolltech Anything
by anonymous on Monday 09/Jul/2001, @17:11

On 3: QObject already allows a certain degree of introspection through QMetaObject (you can call slots, signals and set/query properties dynamically without any dependency on the actual interface) . QCom's QUInterfaceDescription interface is even more powerful by providing not only access to methods and properties but also detailed info for the types being used (for arguments, etc.) .

On 4: That's already been sorted out. It has been decided to drop kdedb in kdelibs in favour of Qt3's database system.

On 5: Why waste additional memory if it's not necessary? And besides, there are still devices like the Cassiopeia out there which do not have enough resources to run a X-server, a toolkit and a application. Bundling everything in Qt/E, providing high performance and a nifty interclient messaging system sounds like a good competition to X :) . Moving a Qt/X11 app to Qt/E is just a matter of recompilation. However what needs to be done in either way is to re-design the GUI to fit for small resolutions. Here the Qt designer comes in where you just exchange the .ui file and there you are. It's a round packet you get. No need to re-write all the Xt calls to fit for 320x240 ;)

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