[Interest] Qt iOS without QML?

[Edward Sutton]

On Oct 27, 2015, at 4:19 AM, Robert Iakobashvili via Interest <interest at qt-project.org<mailto:interest at qt-project.org>> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Roman Wüger <interest at qt-project.org<mailto:interest at qt-project.org>> wrote:
Hello,

Is it at the moment possible to develop iOS apps only with Qt Widgets and without any QML?

Thanks in advance
_______________________________________________

We are doing that for a rather simple GUI,
but mixing it with native popover windows.

Overall, Qt iOS and Android teams are mainly supporting QML
and widgets are considered a second class priority.

Think twice before using Qt at mobile platforms
and consider native development.


I agree with Robert’s recommendation.

I develop a Qt Widget app targeting Android, iOS, OS X, and Windows.  Embedded Linux may become another target.  When you want a single source code to support all these targets Qt can make sense.

However a Qt widget app can be ugly on Android and iOS.  Buttons and tables appear too small for fingers.  Font size is out of proportion.  The touch interface is not natural, it can take a lot of hacking, or it just does not work.  While the app will look good on desktops and can be usable on a Samsung S4 phone, Nexus 7 or iPad tablets, it will likely not look good on smaller screen iPhone 5 and Moto G devices.  UI scaling for various resolutions with widgets is really hard.  You will likely need to interface to native java or Objective-C to accomplish things you cannot do through Qt.

If I was supporting *only* Android or iOS I would give Xamarin<https://xamarin.com/> or one of the HTML 5 frameworks such as Apache Cordova<https://cordova.apache.org/> serious research.  I understand with Xamarin you can do all your business logic in C# and use their generic forms library for the UI.  Or do all your business logic in C# and create the UI using C# interface to the native UI elements.  You could even support Windows phone which may make a one or two customers happy. ;-)

However, if you need to support desktops too, Xamarin may not be so good.  Disclaimer: I have not used Xamarin.

-Ed
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