[Interest] Guide me through the Qt offerings for GUIs

[Rui Oliveira]

Hey,

As per the title implies, I would like some comments on the GUI 
offerings Qt currently has.

I'll share my own assessments and needs, and I'd like very much to hear 
your comments.

So:

I want to write a desktop application. This desktop application would 
not involve displaying lists of things, which seems to be what all 
tutorials/guides/courses are about, especially on the QML side. This 
application would involve some "custom graphics", namely a FFT display, 
and a "waterfall" display. You can google for "GQRX" and you'll know 
what I want.


And then I looked at Qt, and:

First thing I have looked at were QWidgets. I feel comfortable staying 
in the C++ domain. To implement said custom widgets I gave a shot to a 
class inheriting from QOpenGLWidget. And honestly, the experience wasn't 
bad at all!

But, I feel very hesitant to start a project on QWidgets. It feels like 
starting a project on dead tech. Although, I did watch Giuseppe 
D’Angelo's talk in Qt Desktop Days 2020 (slides [1] 
<https://www.qtdesktopdays.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/keynote.pdf>), 
and looking at slide 19, there seem to be prospects of evolution. My 
attention goes especially to "Accelerate widget rendering & compositing 
through RHI". Will QWidgets really have a RHI backend? And a QRhiWidget 
option? Or maybe just QWidget and everything HW accelerated? I can dream...

I know QWidgets are no longer "interesting". Even KDE moved on from 
them... And I understand that's not where the money is for now... Still, 
I'd like some comments.

Now, QML.

Slide 25 of the same talk mentions native desktop styling for QQC2. I 
can't find documentations on this. Are they already available yet? Also, 
in the previous slide, "Planned in Qt 6.x: C++ API for Qt Quick 
elements". Does this mean Qt Quick *without* QML?

Also, in QML it seems to be very hard to have anything native-looking. I 
looked at Qt Labs Platform [2] 
<https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtlabsplatform-index.html> and things like the 
right click menu aren't available on Windows, for example. Are there 
plans to expand this?


Either way, I'm quite divided. I'd like to hear your thoughts and 
recommendations.

In summary, it would seem that my options for the desktop with Qt are 
two self-competing technologies: one "half-dead", one "3/4-baked"... I'd 
really love to be wrong.


Thank you for your time,
Rui


For those reading in plain text:
[1] https://www.qtdesktopdays.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/keynote.pdf
[2] https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtlabsplatform-index.html

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