Elegant Qt's future?

[jacek]

I was impressed to see a step back w.r.t. designer moving from Qt3 to Qt4 (although I must admit, I was never a Qt3 programmer).

On the contrary, the way that .ui files are handled in Qt4 is far more flexible than it was in Qt3, where you were forced to derive your class from QWidget, QDialog or QMainWindow. Now you can derive your forms from your own classes and still use .ui files.

The Trolls have dropped the possibility to use .ui.h files and removed the code editor from Qt Designer, but that was really a dead end --- I can't imagine using them for some serious work.

Will this trend toward simplicity [not sure if this is the right word] continue, as I hope it does, and what factors are involved?

I'm not sure if Qt can be simplier, although the Interview framework is a bit too complex for beginners and they tend to use QxxxWidgets instead of QxxxView, which in the end is just a waste of time. But that's not a matter of changing the API, but rather a documentation issue.

Certainly Qt will be more powerful in the future, just look at TT labs site and see what they're working on. They're not focusing on simply adding new modules to Qt, but rather adding more power to existing mechanisms.

[wysota]

Back to the original topic of this thread: will Qt continue to get better and not just bigger?

Please note that Qt is composed of few distinct libraries, so it's not bloating your code too much and the possibility to turn on and off some features gives some more flexibility to programmers.

I was impressed to see a step back w.r.t. designer moving from Qt3 to Qt4

I agree with Jacek - it was a great leap forward. For beginners switching from Qt3 it is difficult to understand why it's not possible to write code in Designer, but when you're used to some IDE learning a dummy pseudo-IDE (which Designer was at the time of Qt3) was just pain and a waste of time.

Currently I'm a little worried about the fact that code related features are coming back to Designer - especially the possibility to write ECMA scripts. If this continues, we might encounter another dead end.

Will this trend toward simplicity [not sure if this is the right word] continue, as I hope it does, and what factors are involved?

I think there is still much space for improvements, especially in Designer (like providing easy ways to extend it with new possibilities) and in Qt source code - especially getting rid of some hacks which are present there and using somewhat cleaner code that provides more flexibility when it comes to subclassing existing Qt classes.

But Trolls shouldn't focus on improving the existing code. We need things like cross platform multimedia support and more desktop integration. We have to assume that the technology will keep changing causing Qt to change as well - currently it's using top-notch features and solutions but they will once become outdated and be replaced with other techniques. Qt should be standing in the front line then.

But that's not a matter of changing the API, but rather a documentation issue.

I'd add that the community needs more experienced programmers that can teach others and more example code. The wiki we have, Trolltech Labs, Qtnode, blogs of some Qt related people - they should all help provide sample code and articles people can learn from.

They're not focusing on simply adding new modules to Qt, but rather adding more power to existing mechanisms.

Exactly. They are opening new possibilities using facilities Qt already has. Parallel computing, widgets on canvas or even QtTestLib.