Just wanted to know if anyone has any experience with Qt under Windows, Linux and/or Mac OS X? I've been evaluating this type of kit for cross-platform development in C and C++. I was initially thinking about wxWidgets, but every single UI Builder/Designer I've looked at for it stinks. That's putting it mildly. They're just terrible applications for UI design and not at all suited to be used by a designer while working in tandem with a coder. If anyone has ever used Interface Builder for Mac OS X, imagine it lacking just about everything that makes it any good.

Though wx is free and the designer applications cost very little, I've all but ruled it out already. Qt seems like it would cost at least US$5000 (3 platforms, Enterprise ediition), so I'm doing as much research before parting with any money (and will obviously make use of the evaluation period).

Bruno

No direct development experience with it here, but it does have a nice reputation.

And you can try it for free (though perhaps without ALL of the nice tools) for as long you need on Linux, given that it is the toolkit underneath KDE, the most popular Linux desktop environment. The Kdevelop environment is also a freebie, and includes a nice widget-builder GUI and the like.

Cheers

I've not used Qt for a major application, but I've built a few bits and pieces with it and it seems pretty sane -- certainly much saner than Gtkmm. Gtkmm is LGPL though, which makes it easier to use for commercial products.

Peter

The last I looked, Trolltech has dual-licensed Qt as well. If one purchases the $5000 toolset, it includes permission of some kind to distribute closed-source apps built upon it.

cheers

We use QT here in our sister department. The people who work with it absolutely love it, and we are picking up more licenses this year. I haven't heard of any problems or issues with it at all.

Lucky me, the program lead on the project I work most with decided to go with FOXToolkit. I would give vital reproductive parts of my anatomy to be able to go back in time and change that decision

- Tim

Correct, they have dual licensing models. The one I quoted ($5K for 3 platforms) is for the full-blown enterprise edition and you can do whatever you want with the code and your application as far as I know. I'm only interested in developing a closed-source project with it.

Bruno

We use Qt at work for closed-source development on Windows, although I'm the only person to use it cross-platform. As a former non-C++ programmer I found the API easy to use and I've written quite large applications surprisingly quickly. I've also been able to port these apps over to Linux with practically no changes, the Mac version seemed a little buggy. Although considering we don't seem to see eye to eye on things maybe you should take my comments with a pinch of salt.

I think we see eye to eye on a lot. Just not MythTV. I've never said I wasn't biased about that though. I initiated the design and co-architected much of such a project here at work. Still under development, still uber-secretive.

Bruno