GTK integration in terms of look and feel on windows and macos has been so bad for so long that I think the only valid use case for it is if you're targeting gnome specifically.
I can tell when an app uses Qt because it opens in a microscopic window on my Surface. VLC users have been waiting on a fix for Qt-related fractional DPI scaling issues on Windows for years.
Have you ever hooked a high-DPI laptop to a low-DPI second monitor? What a freaking headache that is.
Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but they never have to deal with this nonsense.
MacBooks get the hardware DPI consistency sort of right, but multimonitor support is still flaming garbage to the point where I have to run caffeine 24/7 and use rigid window manager layouts configured per scenario (coding at my desk, pair programming at someone else's desk, meeting, presentation, etc.) to be able to efficiently context switch between the modes and keep the screensaver from mutilating my layout. Windows gets the window layout consistency between monitor configurations mostly right if you ignore chrome and Electron but multi-DPI support is flaming garbage. Linux is completely hit or miss for me depending on the monitor and drivers I've got configured but in a desktop you can at least make Linux reliably not flaming garbage.
I just now realized that my 20th anniversary with computing must have passed in the last few months and looking back, all I can remember is how much every operating system I've ever used has gotten in my way.
/rant
Similarly for grandparent post, VLC runs 100% fine on my 150% scaling Win10 laptop with a 4K screen
These bugs must be somewhat transient...
There's a registry option to double the scaling of Qt widgets, but that makes everything too big.
Erm, yes, and on Windows 10 it works just fine.
> Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but they never have to deal with this nonsense
Not true, I think Windows 10's high-DPI support is fantastic - yes, better than MacOS.
At home I have a landscape 3K monitor daisychained to a portrait 1980x1200 monitor, and it works flawlessly on Windows 10 with both my desktop and 2 work laptops. It works on MacOS, until it doesn't - it sometimes crashes when I switch between the MBP screen and the external screens.
I have a similar setup at the office, but with 2 portrait displays - I have the same issue with my MBP.
The only OS where I have to deal with this nonsense is MacOS.
But everything I use seems to work just fine on Windows 10 across multiple monitors - Office, Visual Studio, Rider and a whole host of small applications (many old) that I doubt did anything specific to enable high DPI support.
Now Win32 and UWP are just two complementary sandboxed execution models, more so when Windows 10X gets released.
Everything, everything, looks scaled and blurry. Apps, installers, widgets, menus, everything. It's amazing how fundamentally terrible everything is, all the time.
Now that I think about it though, my first experience with Windows scaling was the text scaling in (I think) Windows 7. I had it set to 120% because I had my computer hooked up to my TV, but a game I was trying to play (SWTOR) would crash on launch every time if the text scaling wasn't set to 100%, making the text in Windows unreadable unless I went up to the TV.
I'm not sure if Microsoft just can't get their shit together at all, if getting their shit together would break too many apps, or if they have their shit together but Windows app developers are all wildly incompetent.
That's definitely not the normal experience. I only see this in specific applications that either predate DPI scaling or have poor DPI scaling support. Are you running your display at a non-native resolution or something?
> or if they have their shit together but Windows app developers are all wildly incompetent.
Game developers specifically seem to have an issue dealing with slightly unusual situations. I've seen games have issues with plugging in controllers after the game has started, the primary sound output changing mid-game, the user alt-tabbing, a second monitor existing (!), etc.
Contrary to macos you should only ever run a windows display at its native resolution (in macos this is “default for this display”), and use the scaling settings to make things the right size (typically 125% or 150%).
The OS fully supports mixed dpi, but many apps haven’t been updated. There are three categories: (1) apps that are fully up to date and always look right, a minority that includes office 365 but not office 2016; (2) apps that use the older scaling api’s and only look right on the primary screen at login (so to get them to look good on another screen you need to logout, switch primary, and login) which is the majority of apps; and (3) apps that look blurry on anything not 100% scaling (96 dpi), a minority which still includes most installers for some reason.
Microsoft pushed more of the work to developers because they can’t assume the hardware is powerful enough to do what apple did: render everything in a buffer at a multiple and scale it down to the display’s resolution.
I have an external 4K display that works flawlessly if I set it to default (that is 3840x2160 with 200% scaling). If I disable scaling completely (3840x2160 with 100% scaling) it still works well, but the text is a bit too small. With anything in between and there's a noticeable lag.
Interestingly enough, if the internal display uses non integer scaling (I sometimes use 1920x1200) with integer scaling on the external screen it still works ok.
I think it's related to the fact that MacOS draws everything at 200%, and using a non-integer scale over 1920x1080 ends up with a bigger resolution than 4k, whereas 4k at 100% is still 4k.
Because I'm also using a Windows laptop for work, with 125% / 150% scaling on my laptop (fullHD on 13" + 4K external screen on 125%) and it's very far from "everything".
All the browsers are fine, IntelliJ tools are fine, terminal tools are fine, all UWP apps are fine, Electron apps are fine, chat aps are fine... so can you please explain what this "everything" is?
I don’t get why things wouldn’t work?
Also, Dark Mode support on windows (and others) still doesn't work properly, though there are workarounds.
For Windows at least, the Dark Mode support in Qt seems to have someone now assigned to the task (last few days). So it might be better with the next major release.
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html
I've used Qt successfully here with different DPI, and it works well once configured for the most part. It's still not perfect on Windows, but it's a lot better than it used to be when set up properly.
Today they might limit themselves to forced registration, SEO, and spamming business contacts with carefully crafted statements designed to stir fear, uncertainty, and doubt around free licenses by strongly suggesting (without actually claiming) that commercial use without a commercial license is illegal. But tomorrow? Also, keep in mind that a business partner who isn't already familiar with Qt and LGPL is going to be about 10x more susceptible to the FUD. That's the whole idea.
My guess: 30% chance of an ugly fork and lots of drama in the next few years. Then, absent a change in direction, another 30% chance in the few years after that, and so on.
https://dot.kde.org/2016/01/13/qt-guaranteed-stay-free-and-o...
We don't even use Qt. I was just evaluating it. A year before they "reached out."
I still see that as a strike against Qt, even though I understand that the existence of a technically free fork is effectively guaranteed.
That's charitable. The FUD is consistent, persistent, and targeted enough that I'd call it "intentionally deceptive."
Monetizing open source is hard. Maybe this is necessary, and if it is, maybe that's fair. But it's also fair to stay away because of it.
https://www.qt.io/download-open-source?hsCtaTracking=9f6a217...
So Macs are out of question... Can't be signed can they?
What if we get a commercial license? Apple disallowes GPL...
Can't support GTK either, Expat Licensed GUI alternatives please...(I suggest Godot but it comes with a bit of pain and some baggage as well)
There are also other corner cases that they might want to cover, with more documentation.(Not sure if I have missed something)
If anyone has more info pls do share it. :)
... you know that even Apple ships some GPL software on every Mac right ? GPL is 100% fine mac hardware. There are even GPL apps on the appstore. Signing does not prevent you to upload a new version of the app to your own device.
Are you sure they're GPL?
Maybe they're dual-licensed, and the Apple app store is using "the other licence"?
Seem you're right. :)
Am very surprised, after reports a while back of GPL (etc) apps not being approved.
Hopefully they continue to be approved (etc). :)
it was an issue until Xcode 7 : prior to that you had to pay 99$ to Apple for the right of uploading something to your own iDevice. Since Xcode 7 this is not necessary anymore.
To my knowlage and IANAL, this is only possible with older pre-v3 licenses. v3 licenses specifically prohibit tevoisation, something that Apple's App store TOS effectively mandates by placing restrictions on what App users are allowed to do. I believe this is why apple doesn't ship recent versions of Bash.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
there are no issues with modifying, recompiling a GPLv3 app and uploading & running it on your own iPhone, iPad or Mac - it's not tivoization.
* https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance
* https://www.zdnet.com/article/no-gpl-apps-for-apples-app-sto...
If I'm mistaken please clarify.
> https://github.com/peter-iakovlev/Telegram/issues/157
> http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
> https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/06/04/why-does-macos-catalina...
If this were the extent of the shenanigans, I wouldn't be mad. I like having a "help me sell this to my boss" page. But it isn't the extent of the shenanigans. They went around me to shake someone down on my behalf (as I perceive it). Last time it was my boss. Next time I choose a GUI framework for an open source side project, I'll primarily worry about it being my users.
Where does it say that? Can you mention what he is having trouble with? I just took a quick glance at that link in GP and it seems to spell out the obligations of the LGPL pretty clearly on the right side, which are somewhat specific and notably don't include a requirement for your program to be open source. That requirement is only for the GPL components, which is included in the small print on the left.
Making this inference requires you to not only have outside knowledge of open source licenses and the Qt licensing situation, but to be rather confident in said outside knowledge. That's what he had trouble with.
I think that detail about GPL could be easily missed because it's written in small print, but that's a different problem. There are a lot of Qt components so it doesn't make sense to list them all on that page. A full list that can be filtered by LGPL/GPL status is here: https://www.qt.io/features
I'm assuming by outside knowledge you mean the fine print of the license: how is any company supposed to prevent your boss from having to go over that with a lawyer? This isn't even an open source thing, it applies to anyone in the software business. And this is ignoring that the GPL is probably one of the better understood open source licenses at the moment.
The key piece of information is absent.
> it seems to do as good a job as a short marketing page probably could
It could have done better in a single short sentence by stating the key piece of information, rather than leaving it to be inferred laboriously from a pile of details.
> It's not a place where they can reasonably address every common misconception
No, but it could have addressed the single largest misconception. It chose not to.
A business partner has enough money to actually pay for licenses.
I'm currently close to prealpha, if you're interested. https://github.com/cztomsik/graffiti/
> To name just a few things you usually don't need: ... flawless i18n & accessibility
Lack of basic accessibility support is (or should be) a complete nonstarter for any serious project.