[Interest] [Poll] Which direction should Qt Quick 2.x development take?

[Davet Jacques]

Hi fellow Qt users,

spread across various comment threads at the Qt developer forum, Qt Labs blogs, and Qt mailing lists, there has recently been quite a bit of discussion over the scope and priorities of Qt Quick, and whether or not Nokia's (and the other Qt contributor's) roadmap, focus and design choices align with the needs and preferences of the majority of Qt users.

So I thought it might be interesting for everyone to get an overview over where exactly Qt users as a whole  (or at least those who are active in Qt's online communities) would prefer  Qt Quick 2.x to go (or not go) in the near- or mid-term future.

So there is now a corresponding poll (link at the bottom of this mail) hosted at the Qt Developer forum. Completely unofficial, but still worthwhile I think.

The pollquestion is:


Qt 5.0 (which is already in feature-frozen alpha stage) introduces the new scene-graph based Qt Quick 2.0 framework. While the foundations are there, and for many use-cases 
(mobile apps, certain types of games, …) it is already deemed a vastly 
superior way of creating UI’s, it is definitely not yet ready for 
replacing the Qt Widget framework everywhere.


Considering that only finite development resources are available, which potential improvement/add-on for Qt Quick 2.x should – in your opinion – have the highest priority for Qt 5.1 and 5.2?

The choices are:

	* Desktop Components
A comprehensive set of Qt Quick UI elements with native look & feel on all supported desktop platforms.
Note:There is currently a lab project for this.

	* Generic Theming Support 
A way to easily create themeable components, similar to what QStyle make possible for QWidget subclasses.

	* Binary QML
Support for translating QML into a corresponding binary data structure at compile time (rather than letting the Qt Quick engine do it during application start-up), for IPR protection and reduced application start-up time.

	* Expanded C++ Component API
Support for extending existing Qt Quick components, and more convenience for implementing new ones, in C++.
Note:Qt Quick 2.0 doesalready allow C++ developers to create custom components by subclassing QQuickItem or QQuickPaintedItem. However, the built-in components (like Rectangle, etc.) are not exposed to C++ and hence cannot be extended/re-used, and also some users feel that in general more C++ convenience API could be provided.

	* Full C++ API (should have been better named: "Dedicated C++ Front-end API")
First-class support for instantiating Qt Quick elements and populating the Qt Quick scene graph directly from C++, without using any QML – potentially allowing C++11 lambdas (or a custom signal/slot based 
solution) instead of JavaScript expressions for property bindings.
Note: Qt Quick 2.0 does alreadyprovide some C++ API for manually populating the scene graph through QSGNode, QSGGeometry, QSGMaterial, etc. However, some things - like instantiating built-in components - is not possible without passing around at least small snippets of QML, and no clean C++-only alternative is provided for property bindings (one of the things that make Qt Quick so powerful), and altogether some users feel that the existing C++ scene-graph API should be either expanded, or complemented by a different one(e.g. declarative, but still native C++) to make it a "first-class citizen" alternative to the QML "front-end" for Qt Quick.

	* Optional V8 Dependency
Support for building & deploying Qt Quick without the V8 engine for 
applications which don’t need any of the JavaScript-depending features.

	* Graphics View Component
A Qt Quick component providing similar massive-data-visualization functionality as the QWidget-based QGraphicsView (including things like BSP tree indexing of items, collision detection, ...)

	* some other improvement/add-on (please specify in the poll's comment section)

	* nothing – I’m happy with what Qt Quick 2.0 (to be shipped with Qt 5.0) provides.
	* nothing – I don’t like Qt Quick altogether, I’d like to see more resources put into improving other parts of Qt.
Other things which have been requested before in various places, but which I missed at the time when I created the poll(if applicable to you, select "some other improvement/add-on" in the poll and specify by leaving a comment):

	* Sandboxed Mode
Ability to safely run QML files from non-trusted sources, e.g. for using Qt Quick as a Powerpoint replacement.
Note:For an idea of what QML makes possible for "presentation" use-cases, see this labs project.

	* Better Model/View Support
More convenience for creating QML views for complex custom data models implemented in C++.
	* probably more...

Link to the poll:
http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/16693/

Best regards
Davet Jacques
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