The latest version of the Qt GUI has been released just three months after the previous update. Despite the short interval there's quite a lot of changes, including support for the Raspberry Pi 3.

Qt is a cross-platform application and UI software development framework that lets you create native apps for desktop, embedded or mobile platforms.

One major change to the new version is that the open source and commercial versions of Qt now have exactly the same content, so that open source users now get Qt Charts (shown below), Qt Data Visualization, Qt Virtual Keyboard, Qt Purchasing, and Qt Quick 2D Renderer.

The only part not to be included is the Qt Quick Compiler where the developers say they need some more time to finish the required changes to be able to support this feature in the Open Source Edition.

Another change to the new version is the fact that you'll need a C++11 compiler to build and use Qt. A blog post about the new version explains that while it has been possible to use a C++11 compliant compiler together with Qt (and thus use C++11 in your application) for many releases, until now Qt itself didn’t make use of it except for some integration points in the API. As Qt is a C++ framework, the developers want to follow the progress of modern C++ more closely:

"Starting with Qt 5.7, we will require a C++11 compliant compiler to build and use Qt. This allows us to use many of the new features in Qt itself, and renew our codebase using features such as constexpr, move semantics, range-for and auto. These efforts are well under way and will continue throughout the next versions."

A new 3D module has been added to the new version. Qt 3D is used to complement the 3D GUI offering of Qt consisting of integration to OpenGL, Qt Canvas 3D, and Qt Data Visualization modules. It gives you a 3D engine that comes with both C++ and QML APIs, making it easier to embed and handle 3D content within Qt Applications. The developers say that: 

"In general, Qt 3D is much more than just a renderer, it serves as an extensible 3D framework for all kind of simulations."

Another addition to Qt 5.7 is Qt Quick Controls 2, a library of QML-based UI controls. A previous incarnation of Quick Controls were too slow for use on embedded devices due to them being targeted at the desktop. Qt Quick Controls 2 have been built with performance and memory consumption in mind, so have more limited functionality - for example, they don’t come with native styling integration. The trade-off is that they are a lot faster and use less memory, so can be used in embedded and mobile solutions. You can set up custom styles based on templates, and you get three predefined styles:

• Default style – a simple and minimal all-around style that offers the maximum performance
• Material style – a style based on the Google Material Design Guidelines
• Universal style – a style based on the Microsoft Universal Design Guidelines

Other improvements include new functionality in Qt Core, Qt Gui, Qt XML and WebEngine.

Qt for Device creation has also received an update and now ships with Qt 5.7. The list of new hardware in now supports is:

• Rasberry Pi 3 (3- bit mode)

• NVIDIA DRIVE CX boards (Tegra X1, 64 bit ARM)
  
  
• i.MX7 based devices (without GPU, uses the Linux framebuffer and the Qt Quick 2D renderer)

More Information

Qt download page 

Qt Blog

Related Articles

Qt 5.6 Released

Qt 5.5 Released

Qt 5.4 Released

Qt’s New Home

Qt 5.3 Released

Qt 5.2 Released

Digia Buys Qt Development Platform

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter,subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin. 

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info