[Interest] Dealing with Qt 4.x docs in Google searches (Was: "What don't you like about Qt?")

Sze Howe Koh szehowe.koh at gmail.com
Sun Sep 18 11:32:17 CEST 2016


On 18 September 2016 at 16:43, Jean-Michaël Celerier
<jeanmichael.celerier at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Some things that bother me :
>
> * The (perceived) lack of stability with QtQuick / QML : first there was QtQuick with 4.8, then QtQuick 2.0, maybe QtQuick 3.0 with Qt 6 ? Then Controls 1.0, then Controls 2.0 ... everytime with a somewhat short life-span, which makes it a pain when looking for documentation or help, e.g. on stackoverflow.
> * Features being QML-only instead of being usable from C++. I like coding in C++ (but I agree it's hard).
> * Some features not really cross-platform (e.g. in QtMultimedia, QAudioDecoder does not work everywhere, same for the 3D audio classes when there is no OpenAL).
> * The goddamn 4.8 documentation still popping up prior to any other in google search.

In my experience, this has improved significantly in the last year or so.

But if you're still encountering links to outdated docs, this Google
Chrome extension was created precisely to address that pain point:
https://forum.qt.io/topic/35616/chrome-extension-for-improved-doc-searches

It lets you filter Google searches such that only your specified
version of Qt is shown.


> * It's goddamn impossible to do any meaningful work with the QML designer, every time in the change logs they state that it's becoming better, I drag two random widgets and the thing crashes.
> * I agree for the FUD against licenses. But overall there is a lot of FUD against the LGPL, not only Qt (e.g. "you can't statically link against LGPL libs", yes you can). However, while I understand the need for the Qt company to make licensing revenue, I don't think that alienating developers (hiding the "OpenSource" part more and more in the website since the qt-project merger) is the right way to do it.
> * I don't care a lot about moc, as Olivier Goffart has shown with Verdigris it's either ugly macros or moc. And in CMake it's trivial to use anyway.
> However, I think that the Qt guys should *really* try to lobby the C++ standard body's reflection working group so that when (if :'( ) there is reflection in C++ 2α, Qt's meta object model can be implemented in terms of it easily. This would make for something *very* powerful.
> * QString being UTF-16 :'(
>
> Some things that don't bother me at all but seems to bother a lot of people on forums :
> * They expect Qt to be only a GUI toolkit, not a full-blown application framework.
>
> But overall Qt rocks :p
> Best regards,
>
>
> -------
> Jean-Michaël Celerier
> http://www.jcelerier.name


Regards,
Sze-Howe


> On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 10:20 PM, Sérgio Martins <iamsergio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> It's not unusual for us developers and contributors to lose
>> perspective of what's important.
>> After many years spent on very particular implementation details, it
>> becomes difficult to see outside of the box.
>>
>> And because we already know the good aspects I'm asking only about the bad.
>> No need to discuss or reach an agreement, just go ahead and enumerate
>> what you don't like.
>>
>>
>> Personally, I don't know (too much time inside the box), but after
>> googling these came up frequently:
>>
>>
>> - C++ is difficult, Qt lacks quality bindings for mainstream languages
>> - moc (on build systems that don't automate this step)
>> - FUD around licensing
>>
>>
>>
>> Please state your top ones, even if it was already stated by someone
>> else, so we have an idea about which ones matter more.
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sérgio Martins



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