[Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

[Sean Harmer]

Hi,

David Ching wrote:
> "BRM" <bm_witness at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
> news:857149.73114.qm at web65410.mail.ac4.yahoo.com...
>>> I disagree. I've seen several craptacular GUIs developed with other
>>> toolkits, and I think it has a lot more to do with the skill of the
>>> developer than the widget toolkit used.
>> Very much agreed. +10
>>
>> Doesn't matter what toolkit you use (aside from Java, for the most part), 
>> it's very much dependent on the skill of the developer as to the quality 
>> of the GUI.
>> Especially how much attention they pay to the minor details - keyboard 
>> short-cuts, widget placements, etc.
>>
>> Fact is, Qt does make a lot of it far more simple to develop and manage 
>> than most anything else.
>> Qt's functionality is on-par (and probably very superior to) that of 
>> prototyping a GUI with Visual Basic.
>>
>> In fact, if you use QtCreator, you can mimic the whole Visual Basic 
>> experience - but have a far more powerful language (C++) at your hands.
>> I haven't seen _any_ other toolkit do that, not to mention giving you 
>> _more_ bang-for-the-buck (so to speak) since you can arrange a lot of the 
>> GUI driving via Qt Designer without having to write much code due to 
>> signals/slots.
>>
> 
> <sigh>  I'm not getting my point across.  No arguments that Qt is simpler 
> and faster, and more enjoyable to develop with.  That does not negate the 
> fact that to develop the kinds of UI you can do in minutes with .NET would 
> take days in Qt because of the lack of widgets.  For example, please tell me 
> how I would quickly use Qt to develop the apps shown in 
> http://www.telerik.com/products/winforms/sample-applications.aspx
> 
> I honestly hope you can, because I would far rather use Qt than .NET to 
> develop these kinds of apps.  But I don't know how.

OK as an example the app shown in images 1 & 2 could be created in Qt 
usig the following:

Left hand column: QListView

Bottom row: QListView with custom delegate consisting of 3 labels 
(title, thumbnail image and detail text).

Top row: QWidget container with a layout and a few labels some for text 
some for images and a stylesheet or image based brush for background.

Central area: QGraphicsView with some QGraphicsPixmap items for the 
icons and central images and tick marks; QGraphicsTextItems placed in a 
QGraphicsLinearLayout for labels; QPushButton with a 
QGraphicsProxyWidget for the "Purchase" button - with a stylesheet of 
course.

Soon you will also be able to use QML for much of this out of the box as 
another alternative.

So you see it can be done in Qt quite easily. Forget the styling to 
start with and decompose it down into functional elements then apply the 
styling later. You could even make a Qt app look better than those by 
usign the cover flow effect in the central QGraphicsView for example. 
Management of such an app can also very easily be modelled using the 
QStateMachine framework to make your life even easier. You could even 
download the product images etc. from the web in real time using 
QNetworkAccessManager and friends. Data for the views can be linked ot 
the same underlying models for consistency/performance etc.

So the GUI can be replicated and there are all these other nice features 
to make your life easier :-)

ATB,

Sean


> 
> -- David
>  
> 
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