[Interest] Qt 6.2 vs. Qt 5.15 – The Feature Parity Comparison – QtPDF

[Maurice Kalinowski]

Hey,


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Interest <interest-bounces at qt-project.org> On Behalf Of Heiko
> Gerdau
> Sent: Freitag, 3. September 2021 09:52
> To: interest at qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt 6.2 vs. Qt 5.15 – The Feature Parity Comparison –
> QtPDF
> 
> 
> Am 02.09.21 um 15:14 schrieb Benjamin TERRIER:
> > Hi
> >
> > I just went through the latest news article:
> > https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-6.2-vs.-qt-5.15-the-feature-parity-compariso
> > n
> > <https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-6.2-vs.-qt-5.15-the-feature-parity-comparis
> > on>
> >
> > And the linked feature comparison table:
> > https://www.qt.io/product/qt6/qt-5-15-vs-6-2-feature-comparison
> > <https://www.qt.io/product/qt6/qt-5-15-vs-6-2-feature-comparison>
> >
> > And it states this about Qt PDF:
> >
> >     Due to its limited adoption in Qt 5, we are still studying whether
> >     to port this add-on module to Qt 6. Please let us know whether and
> >     how you are using this module. Existing projects can pull the
> >     relevant code from the 5.15 branch into their project.
> >
> >
> > Qt PDF was added in Qt 5.14, so it has only been there since 2 minor
> > versions of Qt 5.
> > Since then we also had 2 minor versions of Qt 6 without this module.
> > Also the module was stripped from the open source online installer,
> > and open source users had to build it themselves or buy a $50 license
> > on Qt marketplace.
> >
> > Given all of this I find weird to use Qt PDF adoption as an excuse for
> > dropping it. It basically never had a chance.
> >
[Maurice Kalinowski] 
I would also like to bring in one other aspect and that is the dependency chain of getting Qt PDF to run.
Qt PDF uses pdfium, which is part of the Qt WebEngine build, which uses Chromium.

The team has been working extremely hard to get Qt WebEngine ready for FF in 6.2. Only with that successful migration, the next step could be to also create pdfium for Qt PDF. Hence, the earliest point in time to have Qt PDF is 6.3. That does not imply that it is going to be available in default Qt, just that it had not been possible earlier at all.

By checking the code you might recognize that some effort has been done already to have these steps enabled, but they are not fully supported as of yet. Hence, another option is also to use these without being pre-built and packaged in the official distribution.

BR,
Maurice