Qt4 IDE

**ccf_h** · 5th February 2006, 12:33

Hi,
there is an interesting project for creating a Qt4-IDE called Qt4DS. I just discoverd it by chance. Obviously it's not a very known project, it looks promising though. Qt4DS can be found at:
http://frenchbreaker.free.fr/qt4ds/index.php

rh · 5th February 2006, 22:03

I wonder how this stayed under the radar for so long. There has been alot of IDE talk on this forum, yet no mention of this IDE until ccf_h discovered it "by chance", as stated. Even Googling for "Qt IDE" doesn't uncover it.

Qt severely needs it's own x-platform iDE. Something actually written in Qt, not wxWidgets or anything else. As i've stated before in a different thread, i wish TT would lead the charge on this since they already have a good visual designer.

I can make do pretty well on windows, but i've for the most part stopped using KDevelop on linux since it's too unwieldy and unstable. At one point i had started to rip out the guts to make my own light-weight IDE, but lost interest since i get along alright with Kate.

When i have a moment, i and i hope others here will check out this new IDE and see what we've got to work with so far.

EDIT: Yup...it needs a bit of work

**wysota** · 6th February 2006, 00:11

Well... you can start such a project, if you wish. If it looks promising, I'm sure QtCentre will officialy patronize it. It will not be an easy task, though, as people already have their favourite IDEs and I doubt they'll use another one specifically for Qt programming. Convincing them would be the hardest part of the project and cloning KDevelop, Visual Studio or XCode's features won't be enough.

**fullmetalcoder** · 6th February 2006, 09:40

Originally Posted by wysota

Well... you can start such a project, if you wish. If it looks promising, I'm sure QtCentre will officialy patronize it. It will not be an easy task, though, as people already have their favourite IDEs and I doubt they'll use another one specifically for Qt programming. Convincing them would be the hardest part of the project and cloning KDevelop, Visual Studio or XCode's features won't be enough.

You will patronize a new IDE written with Qt4 and fully supporting it??? Great news!!!

Gonna tell it to the "staff" !!! (If you don't understand me have alook at those threads :"a text editor with lines number" and " Rich Text Tale Vol1" : I'm too lazy to tell you the story here

)

What about QT4DS ? Well... I discovered it on a french Qt forum, tried it and it looked nice but it lacks a lot of thing (I didn't manage to compile anything) and the UI doesn't really appeal to me.

**wysota** · 6th February 2006, 09:47

Originally Posted by fullmetalcoder

You will patronize a new IDE written with Qt4 and fully supporting it???

QtCentre is a community effort, isn't it? So why shouldn't we partonize other community efforts which want to be patronized?

Of course I haven't consulted that with the rest of the team, but I'm sure that if such an initiative springs, we'll agree to support it somehow (I didn't say we'll be writning it).

**fullmetalcoder** · 6th February 2006, 09:55

It would be really kind of you! The project has just been started but I'm pretty sure we can do something awesome!

**ccf_h** · 6th February 2006, 11:52

Originally Posted by rh

... no mention of this IDE until ccf_h discovered it "by chance", as stated. ...

I was looking at the French Qt forum at http://prog.qt.free.fr/portal.php. There it was announced.

I'm using Vim and Eclipse. It works but it is not phantastic. A real Qt IDE would be great. But as said it's quit "a bit of work" :-(

**ccf_h** · 6th February 2006, 12:01

Originally Posted by wysota

It will not be an easy task, though, as people already have their favourite IDEs and I doubt they'll use another one specifically for Qt programming. Convincing them would be the hardest part of the project and cloning KDevelop, Visual Studio or XCode's features won't be enough.

I think that is very true. One idea would be not to force people to leave their favorite programming editors but to provide a framework where existing editors can be plugged in.
I took this idea from a project called Agide which was designed in wxPython but it is not been actively developed since quite a while. (See http://www.agide.org/)

**fullmetalcoder** · 7th February 2006, 14:26

[quote=ccf_h]I was looking at the French Qt forum at http://prog.qt.free.fr/portal.php. There it was announced.
[quote]
so you speak french, don't you? Nice to meet you, I'm a froggy myself!

**ccf_h** · 7th February 2006, 15:50

Originally Posted by fullmetalcoder

so you speak french, don't you? Nice to meet you, I'm a froggy myself!

Unfortunately my active French is not too good, I have to admit. But I can read it quite well and I understand most what is spoken (unless it's argot ;-). I think it's a great language and I would like to be really fluent in it.

**GreyGeek** · 7th February 2006, 18:57

Originally Posted by rh

...snip...
Qt severely needs it's own x-platform iDE. Something actually written in Qt, not wxWidgets or anything else.

Using the same *.ui file I can put a box around a QLineEdit widget by setting "Frame" to true, while doing that in Windows causes the widget to depress, looking like a hole in the screen. So the Qt Designers don't behave the same way on both platforms, and for a behavior as simple as framing they should.

I can make do pretty well on windows, but i've for the most part stopped using KDevelop on linux since it's too unwieldy and unstable. At one point i had started to rip out the guts to make my own light-weight IDE, but lost interest since i get along alright with Kate.

Dittos. Kate even has a helpful form of "code completion" which works almost as well as it does in MSVC++2003. MSVC often adds properties and methods to a control which aren't actually associated with that control.

When i have a moment, i and i hope others here will check out this new IDE and see what we've got to work with so far.

EDIT: Yup...it needs a bit of work

I'll say. The src compile fails with a ton of errors. The binary crashes on startup.

**jacek** · 7th February 2006, 19:06

Originally Posted by GreyGeek

Using the same *.ui file I can put a box around a QLineEdit widget by setting "Frame" to true, while doing that in Windows causes the widget to depress, looking like a hole in the screen. So the Qt Designers don't behave the same way on both platforms, and for a behavior as simple as framing they should.

Behavior of the "frame" property depends on the current style and has nothing to do with the platform.

**GreyGeek** · 7th February 2006, 19:50

Originally Posted by jacek

Behavior of the "frame" property depends on the current style and has nothing to do with the platform.

The Assistant states:

Qt Code:

Switch view

By default, QLineEdits have a frame as specified by the Windows and Motif style guides; you can turn it off by calling setFrame(false).

By default, QLineEdits have a frame as specified by the Windows and Motif style guides; you can turn it off by calling setFrame(false).

To copy to clipboard, switch view to plain text mode

So the "frame" setting is just switching between the Windows and Motif style guides. The various settings associated with QStyle are not settable in the Designer, so in Windows a depression turns on or off, and in Linux a line turns on or off, when you toggle the frame setting.

Even IF QStyle changes were available in the Designer, the fact that the Designer lacks a group select capability where a group of identical widgets (or a group with similar properties) can be selected and the value of a property can be changed for all of them at one time, forces one to change each widget one at a time, manually. Filling up your class constructor with hand coded custom widget classes for over 100 widgets isn't very productive. I've even tried editing the app.ui manually to add or change features, but that is more witchcraft than coding, especially when you end up with a message that says

Qt Code:

Switch view

'' is not a valid widget

'' is not a valid widget

To copy to clipboard, switch view to plain text mode

and you can't find "". Then you revert to backup and try a different tack.

Subclassing QLineEdit with QStyle just to manipulate the style properties isn't my idea of productive coding. I started down that road with Visual Fox Pro 5.0 by subclassing all the controls so I could add my special features to them. The next time MS released an upgrade to fix bugs in the controls I was stuck. I either had to overwrite my controls with the upgrade, losing my features, or forgo the bug fixes. I decided to go with the bug fixes. In the long run it made maintanence a LOT easier.

In fact, Qt's "rich" widget set is only available via hand coding. The various settings for each widget that the Designer makes available reduce the graphical interface to "crude" rather than "rich", because the tools the Designer supplies to manipulate the widgets are rudimentary at best. But, the widgets are "good enough" to do what I need to get done. I am counting on the fact that the "richness" accessable through the designer, and the power of the Designer, will only improve as time goes on.

**jacek** · 7th February 2006, 20:23

Originally Posted by GreyGeek

The Assistant states:

Qt Code:

Switch view

By default, QLineEdits have a frame as specified by the Windows and Motif style guides; you can turn it off by calling setFrame(false).

By default, QLineEdits have a frame as specified by the Windows and Motif style guides; you can turn it off by calling setFrame(false).

To copy to clipboard, switch view to plain text mode

So the "frame" setting is just switching between the Windows and Motif style guides.

Not quite, it says that Windows and Motif style guidelines require that frame should be visible, so it's visible by default, and that you can always switch it off.

The various settings associated with QStyle are not settable in the Designer, so in Windows a depression turns on or off, and in Linux a line turns on or off, when you toggle the frame setting.

Again it's not a windows/Linux problem. See the attached screenshots, all of them were taken under Linux and as you can see each style treats the "frame" property in a different way.

If you want to change style properties you would have to design a new style, and that's not possible with Designer. The problem is that a style is global for the whole application and you can't change it just for one widget.

There are probably many missing features in the Designer, but you must admit that they made a great improvement since Qt 4.0.0. Just make sure that the Trolls know what they should improve.