[Interest] Guide me through the Qt offerings for GUIs

[Jason H]

I am ambidextrous when it comes to Quick and Widgets.
If you want it to look modern, use Quick. If you want more business-retro, use widgets. Widgets still has better UX, but it is not as bad as it used to be. 

You can do what you want in Quick, with C++ QQuickImageProvider subclass.  It's a little head-scratchy at first, but it works well. Using an Image, I pass the data in via source property URL and generate the image for that data. (My stuff doesn't update frequently, so I send all the data. You'll probably allocate a resources and update the data separately)






> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 12:25 PM
> From: "Rui Oliveira" <ruilvo at hotmail.com>
> To: "Qt Interest" <interest at qt-project.org>
> Subject: [Interest] Guide me through the Qt offerings for GUIs
>
> 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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