[Qt-interest] Impressions of Nokia Qt SDK

[Constantin Makshin]

Hi!

I've played a bit with Nokia Qt SDK and it looks quite promising, particularly because of its size (it's much smaller than "Carbide.c++ + GCCE toolchain + Symbian SDK + Qt for Symbian" combination) and performance (Qt Creator is faster than Carbide.c++ and Qt Simulator outperforms Symbian emulator).

But I was disappointed by several things:
1) legacy of Symbian toolchain — SDK and projects have to reside on the same partition. A bit annoying, but not critical because NTFS junctions solve the problem.
2) installer silently and unconditionally associates source files (.c, .cpp, .h, etc.) with Qt Creator and the only way to restore original configuration is to manually edit appropriate registry entries, even uninstaller leaves modified (obviously, incorrect without Nokia Qt SDK) values. My ideas on solving this problem:
2.1) add an option to the installer and SDK configuration tool so the user can choose whether to associate source files with Qt Creator or use existing configuration;
2.2) add an option to the configuration tool to restore "pre-SDK" associations saved by the installer.
And, of course, uninstaller should set values that had been used before SDK was installed.
3) Qt Simulator doesn't emulate softkeys (at least I couldn't find any way to use them), all they do is showing "desktop" limits. Mobile applications usually assign "primary" actions (accept, back, cancel, etc.) to softkeys to save screen space, so this defect may cause some debugging problems.

I understand that Nokia Qt SDK is a new product and may not have all features developers want[ed] to implement. Moreover, these issues won't prevent people (including me) from using it. Hopefully, these problems, especially the last one) will be fixed in the [nearest] future.

Way to go, Nokia, and long live Qt! :)

P.S.: This message may seem somewhat emotional, but I think there's nothing bad in praising people for good work. ;)