qt weak points and disadvantages?

[squidge]

I can't argue with that but I'm not convinced it has anything to do with performance.

Well, it takes a certain amount of processor power to process a message, so the more messages you process per second, the more processor power required for that application?

It's probably mostly related to the fact that your style has the hover mode turned on for Qt (or XP/Vista/7 actually) and from what I know MFC doesn't handle such things at all (meaning you don't get hover effects over buttons, etc.). You'd have to compare that with a Qt style that doesn't enable the hover flag (like probably Motif).

I can write an application that shows a popup (hint) when the mouse hovers over a control. Such an application can process zero messages to do that, as the OS will highlight the button and then show the hint/popup after a delay. The app only gets a message if the button is actually clicked. Sure, the app could ask for mousemove messages whilst over that control, but there is no need if the OS will do the work you want anyway.

However, I do agree that the processing has to occur somewhere, so the above is quite possibly just shifting the processing work from the App to the OS.

Where can I read more about Qt Aliens? It would be interesting the compare one top-level widget + Aliens and multiple widgets.