Puzzled by desktop development priorities, Mac OS specifically [Warning: Rant]

janfaroe

Posted to the Development list July 12, not a word from the moderator. Got confirmation mail instantly though:

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Puzzled by desktop development priorities, Mac OS specifically
[Warning: Rant]

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SGaist

Did you subscribe to the mailing list ?

janfaroe

Ah. Sorry, no. I read it as if I would get notified whether the post would be accepted or not. I see that's not the case.

However, the post is nowhere to see in the archive listing (latest entry July 16): http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2013-July/date.html

janfaroe

So. After realizing that anonymous posts are ignored (not showing up in mail archives at least), I signed up for the Development list and posted my thoughts. But, seems like no one is interested in discussing this.

I guess contacting Digia is the last resort.

SGaist

You might have missed "this link":http://qt-project.org/groups/qt-contributors-summit-2013/wiki/Qt_Mac_Planning that might be of interest from the mail entitled "QtCS Mac session report"

janfaroe

Thanks - I did indeed miss it! Still, I think much of it is a disccussion that should have been there before Qt 5.0 went out of beta. Hence my concern about priorities.

janfaroe

And finally - response from the list :-)

SGaist

Yes, and I responded too :)

janfaroe

I saw it, great!

So, you've made the decision to stick with 4.8 until 5.x offers the same features, as I understand it. I think I'll do that as well.

janfaroe

All right. I lied; I did switch to 5.x in the hopes that things worked out. It didn't - speaking 5.2 now. Still no MacExtras, plus new showstopper bugs. I'm going back to 4.8.5 hoping that at least some of the previous bugs has been fixed.

Also, I decided to finally write a letter to Digia. Raising my concerns on the mailing list did not seem to have any effect. Here goes:

I switched from the back then Qt 4.8.4 to Qt 5.0 already in the beta stage, happy to see that some of the Widget problems on the Mac platform had been fixed - several issues regarding the list widgets, a non-native way of showing QToolButtons in a Preferences window, plus more that has slipped my mind at this point. Furthermore, the promise of better native widget handling, faster response times and goodies like JSON parsing support attracted me enough to make the jump, believing that the QtMacExtras support would be just around the corner.

However, the framework is now at version 5.2. There is still very, very sparse support for QtMacExtras. The unified toolbar, an important UI feature for many professionally looking Mac applications is supposed to be in QtMacExtras, but it’s not. Neither is access to native widgets, again a must to obtain a certain standard in the Mac OS UI. Segmented buttons, native rounded search widgets - inaccessible as a non Cocoa developer.

Furthermore, the following reported bugs are showstoppers in my opinion, bugs which has been present since at least 5.1:

https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG/component/19210 (Mac: Triggering a menu item with contextual QMenu often fails)
https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-35821 (Mac: Contextual menu hangs/won't close under certain circumstances; application relaunch is only resort)
https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-35820 (Mac: Contextual menu not closed when switching application)

In short: It’s still not possible shipping a Qt Mac application that behaves and looks like it’s expected, despite the passing of 3 minor versions.

Please don’t misunderstand me here - I think Qt is an amazing framework, and I am grateful for its existence. I can only imagine the huge effort it has taken to have come this far.
I can see there’s a lot going on development wise in the Qt project (QML, support for new platforms, new features I don’t even know about, restructuring), and that’s fantastic. But am I wrong when I’m claiming that the desktop platforms and the Widgets part of Qt is the “legacy” bits of the framework? If yes, I don’t understand why it seems to be having low priority - well, at least on the Mac. I can sort of accept that the issues above where part of a x.0 release, but not two minor releases later.

Please. Don’t forget the desktop platforms. Don’t forget the widgets. And please don’t forget the Mac.

As a user of the Qt Open Source version, I feel powerless - I don’t have the necessary Objective C/Cocoa skills to help fix the issues. All I can do at the current point is to move my code back to 4.8 (trivial, albeit time consuming), because I have no idea when an acceptable Mac version will surface. If I was a commercial license user, my situation would perhaps be better, but at the current rates it’s off limits for me at the moment. I am a single developer, and simply can’t afford the prices which are clearly targeted towards bigger corporations - and I know I’m not alone here (http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/9762).
As per above forum thread: Would a price segmentation perhaps be an idea? I’m pretty sure I’m not alone believing that Digia would actually make more money doing so. Count me in as a customer when that happens!

Kind regards,

Jan Faroe, an otherwise happy Qt developer