Re: Midgard
On Monday 23 August 2004 04:51 am, Martin Stachon wrote:
> You surely have much more knowledge about Qt than me (I always prefered
> GTK/Gnome applications for Linux) But from what I read on trolltech's
> website, it should be easy to write cross-platform code with Qt as it
> handles also file operation, threading, networking, etc.
Well, I do have more knowledge of Qt than I do of GTK, but I wouldn't call
myself a guru by any means. The threading and networking potentials are
definitely something I want to tap into with Midgard. However, on issues
like file operation, we run into a "recreate the wheel" issue. Euphoria, as
it stands, is already fairly cross-platform in that area, and it would be
simpler just to call open() as opposed to wrapping duplicate functionality.
That having been said, I could see writing some routines based on the QDir
object, in order to access file system information, and other information
that a call to dir() in Linux Euphoria code could not readily retrieve.
> > While Qt in Linux is distributed under the GPL (actually, it is
> > dual-licensed and is available under the Q Public License as well), Qt
> > for Windows is not. In order to legally develop using Qt in Windows, the
> > purchase of a license is required. The cheapest license that I found for
> > Qt while looking through their website was $1,500 US. Given I don't
> > ordinarily code for Windows, and have no plans to, I simply can't justify
> > the expense. Therefore, even if I did try to make Midgard
> > cross-platform, I would have no way to test it on my own machine.
>
> This is the real problem. I love linux, but not everybody does so, so I'd
> like my applications to be cross-platform. So I'll probably stick to GTK.
Cross platform code certainly has its place. If I were to slip on my tinfoil
hat, or better, Sarmac's turban 
), I can see a point in the scheme of
things were Linux and Windows will be running neck to neck for a while in
terms of raw numbers of users. At that point, most software would be
produced in "Windows Version" and "Linux Version," in which case GUI toolkits
like Qt, GTK, wxWindows, and perhaps even Java's Swing toolkit would be "all
the rage" in geekdom.
As far as sticking to GTK, it boils down to "the right tool for the right
job." euGTK is an excellent toolkit, and if it is easier to write
cross-platform code using it, go for it! (Yes, I tried to be a salesman
once, and failed horribly.) Each toolkit has its own strengths and
weaknesses, but they all offer choice, and have their own niche here.
The Windows "open source" community is often overlooked, unfortunately, even
though there are a lot of such projects. Perhaps one day Qt will stop
turning a blind eye to those folks, and distribute the Windows version under
a license more conducive to such communities and individuals. The price tag
is just a real show-stopper for me ... I'd seriously consider buying a
license if they had, say, a license for $100 which stated that you could only
release non-commercial or GPL'ed projects.
> But I saw some opensource projects running with Qt/Windows, for example the
> Psi Jabber client (http://psi.affinix.com/) Did they buy the license?
More than likely it was bought *for* them. Open source is often sponsored by
large corporations, such as IBM, Red Hat, etc. The Windows version of
Doxywizard uses the Windows version of Qt.
Have a great day!
Travis.
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