[Development] Question about Qt's future

[Yves Bailly]

On 21/04/2014 04:53, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> Em dom 20 abr 2014, às 22:37:11, md at rpzdesign.com escreveu:
>> Isn't Qt Widgets so mature that they are stable?
>
> They are.

But so much could still be done... as a basic example I stumbled upon
very recently, why is it so hard to change the font of *one* item in
a combo box??

> The design direction is because QML is easier to develop with,

Not for heavy-weight applications, even less when part of the UI is
dynamically build at runtime according to context, config files, etc.

> more modern,
> and based on OpenGL. Widgets don't have that and will never be as efficient.
> Therefore, the effort is directed towards the technology that has the potential
> to make interfaces for 2017-2020.

Even in 2017-2020, we'll still have desktops. Phones or even tablets are just
not suited for *real* work, and I don't see how they could be. A professional
writer can type 100 words per minute on a keyboard, I doubt this will be
even remotely possible on a tablet. Doing serious 3D modeling on a tablet
is a joke. And think about the hundreds of mouse/keyboards shorcuts... if
you remove them, as its the case on "modern" devices, you loose a lot in
productivity.

QtCreator is a complex application, though not as heavy-weight as some I
work on. Could it be redone "the right way", with *all* the UI in QML and
the "business logic" in C++? would developing QtCreator this way be as efficient
as it is today? and finally, would a user be as efficient with it on a
"modern" device as he can be on a good'old desktop? Same question for Calligra
and others.

QML has its merit, it's certainly perfect for some projects. But for all
I've seen and tried until now, only for projects having a rather simple UI.
For really complex UIs, QML seems not suitable - at least for now.

Mind, what I (and others) is talking about, are applications where user's
productivity matters more than the UI being nice - or even looking "native".
Take Blender: sure, the learning curve is steep. But once you know it, you
can very very productive with it, *on any platform*, because it looks the
same *on all platform*. "Looking native" might be a nice selling or demo
thing, but it's just irrelevant (or even counter-productive) for a whole
class of applications.

So please, please... keep improving widgets! :-) some things are unnecessary
difficult to do, some features would be so nice to have...

-- 
(o< | Yves Bailly                          | -o)
//\ | Linux Dijon  : http://www.coagul.org | //\
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