Heartbroken app-maker Qt sneaks into Android's bed

The effort towards a Qt library for Android is progressing, with a fourth and final alpha release being sent out the door – despite confidence in the platform having steadily eroded since Nokia dumped it. Qt is a library of cross-platform APIs which enables even complicated apps, such as VLC's VideoLAN, to run across operating …

[dssf]

Fine by me if....

If it can tie together MMORPG, SQL databases, and enable end-users to modify the forms associated with editing a front end to the database... If a small team of 5-8 people can use it to make MMORPG stuff (no, forget about cloud this and cloud that for now)) on the phone, tablet, and desktop (Linux, Mac, and Win), and deliver a common gaming experience, the this would be awesome. If it is simple enough for the team to not be hammered by a need for external contractors to unfrag or de-encypher back-end code, this would be awesome. If the databases are small enough to not be held hostage by any given ISP or other *SP, then super!

[Anonymous Coward]

TrollTech Qt

Ahh, Happy memories of my Sharp Zaurus,,,

[Jon Press]

The Lessons of History

"Google and Apple will outlast one's professional career"

The only vaguely comparable company that has so far outlasted my professional career is IBM. Apple has been very nearly dead once already. Technology companies don't have a track record of longevity.

[Ru]

Re: The Lessons of History

I wonder how all the windows mobile 'classic' devs are feeling these days. Not so long ago, it would have seemed a rather better gamble to assume that Microsoft would not only outlast your professional career, but also Apple's existence too. Funny how things change, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Longevity?

I've been using Qt since the mid-90s, and still use some of those applications today (after a quick make) on current OS releases. That's more than you can say about software written with Mac OS 9 or Windows 95 frameworks, both of which were released well _after_ Qt.

[Kristian Walsh]

There are officially-supported ports coming too..

"Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms."

[ http://www.digia.com/en/Home/Company/Press/2012/Digia-to-acquire-Qt-from-Nokia/ ]

Considering that these guys got Qt up and running on Symbian, iOS and Android will be a walk in the park by comparison.

Note that they say "Windows 8", not "Windows Phone 8", but I think they may be referring to the Windows RT libraries that are common to WP8 and "the-UI-library-formerly-known-as-Metro", as Qt already supports Windows 7, and Windows 7 applications run perfectly on Windows 8.

[toadwarrior]

QT is good and rather than being childish about it they should focus on the good things about QT rather than having a go at the competiton.

[DrXym]

QT would be a good thing

QT developers could target Android, iOS and Playbook with relatively small changes between platforms. And Symbian and Linux and Windows classic and OS X. Potentially also Windows Runtime.

There isn't any other technology which would span the platforms and allow such flexibility. The other viable option might be HTML with a wrapper like Phonegap but it would only be suitable for apps which mostly display content and don't care too much about performance. I doubt it would be much good for games or high performance because embedded HTML viewers vary so much in their behaviour.

[Ragequit]

Nothing to lose..

How is having another choice a bad thing? Correct me if I'm wrong but the market for languages/frameworks seems to be quite fragmented. Perhaps this is done on purpose to try to generate developer lockin?

MS's plans are still somewhat uncertain as well. Afaik XNA is being killed/mutated. .NET is now the red headed step child. Windows store is around the corner. Steam is moving to compete while hinting at a set top box running Linux (never know when MS might try to force them off windows 8 in the name of "security"). Apple has apps on the desktop and mobile with their own stacks. There is a push for more electronic distribution on the next round of consoles.

Of course all these companies would love to get developers to target only their platform. But I think in the long term things will go cross platform despite their best efforts. Just look at the multi-platform nature of AAA game titles. There is a demand for multi platform frameworks/engines. If qt can fill that need then great.

[Mark .]

Qt is great

The Android port can already be used to deploy applications on Google Play and elsewhere (and note that the convoluted instructions given in the link are for testing the very latest version, and not for usual installation). I can write code that easily works on Windows, Linux, Symbian and Android (as well as potentially OS X, BlackBerry, Maemo/Meego and a whole load of embedded Linux platforms, though I personally don't have those platforms to support them).

I wouldn't say Nokia "dumped" Qt - they realised it no longer fitted with their needs, and rather than just sitting on it and letting it die, they passed it onto another company (of course, being open source meant it could never die even if they did that, but at least Nokia did properly pass it on, along with the developers working on it).

Nokia also made major contributions to Qt (as noted by the necessitas lead developer - "I value too highly the contributions Nokia has made to Qt"), including doing much of the hard work to make Qt suitable for mobile platforms in the first place (e.g., adding APIs for things like GPS, accelerometer, cameras).

[Tim99]

No, this is not the way it was meant to be

When all of the fAndroid kiddies and iFondle hipsters have moved over to HTML5, I shall still be using the CLI to talk to my compiled C programs - The way computing was meant to be.

Qt is OK, I suppose - If you have lusers who won't use the CLI, and you can't manage to write what they need with ncurses.

[RAMChYLD]

But... KDE has always been Qt's mate!

Always has! KDE to Qt is like Gnome to GTK!

[Shaun Hunter]

QT's older than Google

It started in 1992.

Also there is no separate version for phones as the article suggests.