qt updatesince Nokia dropped the soap... Qt's future looks quite sad

Or, alternatively, Nokia is dead: http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/;-)

It's funny how history repeats. If I remember correctly, this is exactly what Microsoft did to SGI. Rick Belluzo, an ex MS chap becomes the head honcho of SGI and starts a series of deals with MS in the 3-D graphics area (there was a venture to create a unified graphics API called Fahrenheit that never materialised). At that time MS was struggling to push its Direct3D stuff and SGI was king of OpenGL. By the time this was all over, MS had most of the SGI patent porfolio in its vaults and SGI went into oblivion.We see today that MS is struggling badly in pushing its WP7 onto mobiles. An ex MS guy takes the helm of Nokia, starts making deals with MS. Hmm.... interesting...

QuoteOriginally posted by: demhaAn ex MS guy takes the helm of Nokia, starts making deals with MS. Hmm.... interesting...are you a trojan horse?

I agree that the future of Qt is not clear today. But it is worth to remember that the Qt framework is not used on mobile platforms only:Qt (Framework) - WikipediaDominik Edit: Link updated

QuoteOriginally posted by: semanticumI agree that the future of Qt is not clear today. But it is worth to remember that the Qt framework is not used on mobile platforms only:Qt (Framework) - WikipediaDominik Edit: Link updatedI'm pretty sure it's more commonly used for non-mobile rather than mobile platforms.

QuoteOriginally posted by: demhaIt's funny how history repeats. If I remember correctly, this is exactly what Microsoft did to SGI. Rick Belluzo, an ex MS chap becomes the head honcho of SGI and starts a series of deals with MS in the 3-D graphics area (there was a venture to create a unified graphics API called Fahrenheit that never materialised). At that time MS was struggling to push its Direct3D stuff and SGI was king of OpenGL. By the time this was all over, MS had most of the SGI patent porfolio in its vaults and SGI went into oblivion.We see today that MS is struggling badly in pushing its WP7 onto mobiles. An ex MS guy takes the helm of Nokia, starts making deals with MS. Hmm.... interesting...This is exactly what I was thinking except it seems more like two dinosaurs hugging each other while the mammals over take them. MSFT wants what NOK used to have and NOK wants what MSFT used to have.

QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiI'm pretty sure it's more commonly used for non-mobile rather than mobile platforms.true, but its resent resurgence was due to mobile use perspectives. it'll shrink back to what is was: niche tool with a handful of users

Bottom line, what GUI library should I be using now? Any suggestions welcome.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4Alphait seems more like two dinosaurs hugging each other while the mammals over take them. MSFT wants what NOK used to have and NOK wants what MSFT used to have.Whatever. If people are willing to pay $400 for a handset, my grandmother could write an awesome GUI with alarm clock, browser with flash, mp3 player, SMS conversations, and email reader.She could project a hologram if she had the economies of scale of Nokia's distribution.

QuoteOriginally posted by: EdgeyBottom line, what GUI library should I be using now? Any suggestions welcome.I don't think there's anything really.QT uses the Bridge design pattern behind the scenes to realise device-independence. If you have buckets of time and customers pay you can make your own as on these lines for CAD some years back. It was a lot of work: is a Motif button the same as a MS SDK button, how to emulate etc. etc. Mucho $$A question: does the app really need to be device-indepedent? If desktop the choice is easy; WinForms.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnA question: does the app really need to be device-indepedent? If desktop the choice is easy; WinForms.Or WPF as it's known now in its most recent reincarnation. No doubt, the name will evolve again. WinForms/WPF applications are very resource hungry just like the Java Swing applications. I have never seen a large scale commerical application using WinForms/WPF yet; not even from Microsoft! For example, the most competent GUI application that MS has, i.e. Visual Studio is pure native code.We shouldn't write off Qt so soon. After all, Qt does have an LGPL license (as well as GPL v3) and even if Nokia stopped its investment, Qt will live on. Interesting reading can be found here ("Unequivocally, Qt is not dead"):http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/14/update-on-qt/The only other open source alternative of equivalent calibre is the Gtk framework and Red Hat is the main commercial backer of that.Sometimes you do need to keep device independence. I'm quite impressed with Mathematica's UI on Linux. To my mind, it's even more functional than on Windows and the Linux UI uses Qt! Not sure, why they don't use Qt on the Windows side as well.

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: demhaAn ex MS guy takes the helm of Nokia, starts making deals with MS. Hmm.... interesting...are you a trojan horse?

QuoteOriginally posted by: EdgeyBottom line, what GUI library should I be using now? Any suggestions welcome.Take a look: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/easy-cro ... uages.29// Note: since a GUI-framework has-a GUI-library, widget toolkits list includes both.We already have had some discussions about that on Wilmott earlier; here are my views:http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm? ... cidentally, it's helpful to recognize the distinction between "a GUI library" and "a framework with a GUI library."An example of the former would be FLTK.An example of the latter would be Qt.Each has different uses and applications -- sometimes a lightweight library that weighs 100 KiB total is more appropriate than a 150 MiB framework.For instance, if you want a few buttons to test your numerically-intensive application (with its core competence being number-crunching performance, not the GUI/presentation part, and that may end up being used from Excel in production stage anyway) I'd say go for FLTK (though even here YMMV).Just like with optimization algorithms and programming languages, there's no free lunch, so this is a choice that you have to make and that may be be different for each of your applications.If your main purpose is producing charts, not GUIs with other widgets /* widgets being those -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUI_widget ... ic_widgets */, then you might be better off forgetting about all of the above altogether and instead looking at:- MathGL -- http://mathgl.sourceforge.net/- PLplot -- http://plplot.sourceforge.net/Hope that helps.

Great response Polter. Thanks. FLTK looks very interesting. One thing I wanted was the flexibility to sell closed source code in the future (although I'm generally an open kinda guy). QT allowed a LGPL and a commercial license. "FLTK is provided under the terms of the GNU Library Public License, Version 2 with exceptions that allow for static linking."Am I right in thinking that so as long as I don't modify the code then I can distribute my binaries as closed?