Qt for Android better than ever before • Hacker News Board

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#21

Post by stabbles » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

_l4jh wrote: post #6

Qt for Android has always looked pretty good but I never see it used. Could someone link a few real-world apps developed with Qt for Android?

Not really a real-world app, but a simple QtQuick with Qt3d app worked pretty well. When it comes to app sizes, a vanilla Qt app produces an apk file of ~15MB, which is reasonable.

I had troubles accessing external storage (the SD-card), and ended up writing quite some ifdefs to fix that. Probably the kdab folks have proper solutions to most common issues, but at the end of the day the idioms between desktop apps and mobile apps are quite different, and you will end up wasting time to fix those issues if you really believe in having a single code base for cross-platform apps.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#22

Post by krn » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #19

krn wrote: post #14

What are the technical reasons to prefer Qt over JavaFX[1]? Even Bitwig Studio, which is a C++ audio application, went with JavaFX for its cross-platform UI. It can also be written in React-like declarative style[2], which is much easier to maintain. [1] https://openjfx.io/ [2] https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx

Along the lines of [2], there is also ScalaFX: https://github.com/scalafx/scalafx

And TornadoFX[1] in Kotlin, which seems to be a complete framework.

[1] https://tornadofx.io/

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#23

Post by quietbritishjim » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

mherrmann wrote: post #15

For people new to Qt: It's a cross-platform GUI framework. It's written in C++ but can also be used from (among others) Python. If you're interested in examples, see for instance https://build-system.fman.io/pyqt-tutorial (I'm the author).

> Not Found

> The requested URL /pyqt-tutorial was not found on this server

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#24

Post by dkersten » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

oever wrote: post #8

allenskd wrote: post #5

I don't know how Qt & Android fare these days... I know it was quite a hassle to create background services when I first tried to get into it and there was no definitive answer as I think it was still on the roadmap to add it (perhaps?). Qt is amazing and so is QML. I still found QML JavaScript engine utilizing a lot of memory back then as well and I don't know if it has been fine-tuned these days.

Qt6 will have faster and lower footprint QML because JavaScript will be optional. Also QML will gain type checking.

Is there a timeline or target release date for Qt6 yet?

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#25

Post by allset_ » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

mherrmann wrote: post #15

For people new to Qt: It's a cross-platform GUI framework. It's written in C++ but can also be used from (among others) Python. If you're interested in examples, see for instance https://build-system.fman.io/pyqt-tutorial (I'm the author).

Your link is broken.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#26

Post by superpermutat0r » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #23

mherrmann wrote: post #15

For people new to Qt: It's a cross-platform GUI framework. It's written in C++ but can also be used from (among others) Python. If you're interested in examples, see for instance https://build-system.fman.io/pyqt-tutorial (I'm the author).

> Not Found > The requested URL /pyqt-tutorial was not found on this server

https://build-system.fman.io/pyqt5-tutorial

5 missing

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#27

Post by jcelerier » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #24

oever wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt6 will have faster and lower footprint QML because JavaScript will be optional. Also QML will gain type checking.

Is there a timeline or target release date for Qt6 yet?

https://www.qt.io/blog/2019/08/07/technical-vision-qt-6

TL;DR : "we’re aiming to have Qt 6.0 ready for a first release by the end of 2020."

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#28

Post by jcelerier » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

krn wrote: post #14

What are the technical reasons to prefer Qt over JavaFX[1]? Even Bitwig Studio, which is a C++ audio application, went with JavaFX for its cross-platform UI. It can also be written in React-like declarative style[2], which is much easier to maintain. [1] https://openjfx.io/ [2] https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx

> It can also be written in React-like declarative style[2], which is much easier to maintain.

you haven't seen QML :-)

http://qmlbook.github.io/ch04-qmlstart/qmlstart.html#qml-syn...

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#29

Post by joezydeco » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

pepijndevos wrote: post #10

I have in the past developed a fairly large (proprietary) Qt application that used the same codebase on Linux, Windows, and Android. I would say Windows and Android are tied for compile hell. This update looks really neat, and may solve some problems for some people. But personally my biggest gripe with Qt is qmake. When you are doing Android, lots of resources assume Gradle, and lots of Qt stuff assumes qmake. Neith…

You didn't try iOS? =)

The XCode cross-compile is incredibly smooth, and the runtime is complete ass. Qt really messed up high-DPI support and it has no better example of this than iOS.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#30

Post by mangosherbet » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

Qt is a great toolkit and I've messed around with it on Android on and off since Lighthouse. One thing I want to point out is that Qt is LGPLv3 and (in my non-lawyer opinion) this is a pain point on restricted application environments like the Google Play store on Android. Its not clear to me that you can comply with a user request to get access to replace or modify LGPL'd software in your application.