[Qt-interest] Using Qt for plugin to third party app

[Dario Ahdoot]

Hi,

We develop plugins for third party applications (i.e. Maya, 3D Studio Max, etc.). We want to write one UI that will run across all third party apps and platforms and we are looking at using Qt for this.

However, we have hit a brick wall fairly early on in the process... when our plugin gets loaded in the applications main/gui thread, to startup our main plugin window we need to call the QApplication::exec() method. However, this is a blocking call and only returns when the app is shut down, and as a result the host application hangs. (Actually, in our initial testing, Maya's UI becomes responsive despite that fact that exec hasn't returned, which is an utter mystery. But that is another story.)

It doesn't appear many people have tried doing something like this. The closest thing I could find was this link:
http://lists.trolltech.com/qt-interest/2005-08/thread00692-0.html

But that doesn't seem to provide much of an answer other than pointing us to QWinWidget. QWinWidget, while I haven't tried it yet, it may help us out on the Windows platform, but it is unclear if there is a comparable solution on Linux (Maya, which is the most important app we need to support, only runs on Fedora, Suse, and Red Hat). Also, the documentation for QWinWidget makes it seem like it is designed to work for modal dialogs, not modeless dialogs, which is what our plugin needs.

So, I guess my main question is: is Qt designed to be used this way? i.e. as the basis for the GUI in a plugin to some third party application? If so, what is the best way to do it that will work across all platforms (at least Windows and Linux)?

Thanks in advance,
Dario
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