[Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

[David Ching]

"Sean Harmer" <sean.harmer at maps-technology.com> wrote in message 
news:4B890A45.6090607 at maps-technology.com...
> 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.
>

Thanks much Sean.  Indeed, I have to learn about delegates, proxy widgets, 
styles, and stylesheets.


> 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 :-)
>

If this were the only game in town, it would be a pretty good game.  But I 
still have a hard time convincing my clients for these reasons:
1) .NET is a drag and drop (and endlessly fiddle with properties) experience 
to get the above.  Qt isn't.
2) With .NET the good styling is readily seen immediately.  Not with Qt 
whose out of the box UI makes Management not believe in it.
3)  It's easier to hire a .NET developer than a Qt developer (in USA), so 
codebase maintainability is better with .NET.
4) The target audience do not much care about nice things such as good 
performance, keyboard navigation and accelerators and all the nice things Qt 
makes it easy to get right.

#3 is the root problem.  If Qt had momentum in USA especially for Windows, 
perhaps convincing management of the rest would be reasonable.  I had hoped 
when Qt became LPGL, Windows C++ programmers would start to use it more, but 
judging from the job market (at least in the Silicon Valley, USA area) that 
hasn't happened.

-- David