[badsectoracula]

> Why "besides QtCreator, etc"? It sounds to me almost like "do you know any X besides all of the popular X". Is there any particular reason you discount QtCreator?

I know Lazarus (almost) inside out and i've tried several times to use QtCreator, mainly because C++ would allow me to reuse some of my C code. However i could never get used to how QtCreator expects from me to do more stuff, how unweildy the laying out widgets is (this is natural since Qt's layout management was made expecting programmers to do layouts via code but compared to Lazarus' alignment and anchor based layouts they feel like taking a step back - although the same can be told with Lazarus' layout if you try to do it via code) and other not necessarily big issues but still annoying enough for me to always drop it.

[jcelerier]

> Qt's layout management was made expecting programmers to do layouts via code

what ? no.

For widgets: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/designer-layouts.html

For QML: http://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/quick-screens.html

[badsectoracula]

You misunderstood, i meant that the programmers who designed Qt's layout systems expected the programmers who will use Qt would prefer to write code for laying out their UIs (most likely because this is what most UI libraries did and still do) so they designed the APIs with that in mind. I didn't mean that Qt required from them to do it via code.

This is in contrast to Lazarus' layout system, the programmers of which expected ("assumed", "thought", "believed", etc) that the programmers that will use Lazarus will create the UIs using the IDE's UI desiger and so made the layout system be more UI friendly as opposed to code-friendly.

[dkersten]

Have you tried QtQuick/QML? It sounds like its anchor/grid/constraints-based layouts work very similarly to Lazarus.

[vertex-four]

QtQuick, on the other hand, uses non-native widgets - the whole thing is rendered as an OpenGL scene.

[dkersten]

True. Some people may find that as a deal-breaker. Personally, with the age of web-UI's (that look very different from each other and certainly don't look like the native widgets), I don't see QtQuick's native-styled-but-non-native widgets a problem (and the OpenGL-based system has proven to be really great for performant animation).

But I can see that if you require platform-native widgets, QtQuick is probably not an option. I just think that most people don't need this ;-)

[vertex-four]

I'd argue that at this point, if you're building a desktop application, one of your goals is probably going to be the use of native widgets, which could be for e.g. accessibility concerns. Else you might as well build a web application.

[dkersten]

> Else you might as well build a web application.

The reasons to use something like Qt instead are many:

  - While the widgets aren't platform-native, they emulate the native look and feel, so look a lot more native than your web application. Yes, yes, you likely won't have the accessibility features, so if that's a concern (which it probably should be), sure, Qt and other such libraries won't help. (Note that even MS don't use their own "native" widgets in, eg, Office and Visual Studio, so even within first-party windows applications, you lose consistent look and feel)
  - Battery life. A C++ Qt application typically uses much less battery than a similar web application. This may or may not be a concern.
  - Smooth animation. QML's OpenGL-based widget rendering has incredibly smooth animation support (and its super easy to add to your applications). Anecdotally, much nicer animations than I've ever seen in web applications.
  - Platform access or native libraries. Even though your widgets aren't native widgets, you might still want to manually access platform features or C/native libraries. While some web-applications-in-a-webview tools do allow you to do this, Qt makes it trivial since you can drop down to C++ with ease. With conditional compilation, you can even make this work cross platform.
  - Performance. Sometimes you have requirements that simply require C++ performance. Many industrial users of Qt, for example.
  - Qt is also used for embedded UI's where a web application may not be feasible.

My point is that there are many reasons why you might choose to use a toolkit like Qt for desktop applications even if you don't need native widgets.

[badsectoracula]

Isn't that a JSON-like language? I find describing UIs in text instead of "drawing" them like done in Lazarus to be going backwards.

Although TBH i haven't really looked into that. Most QtQuick programs i've seen look like something you'd see in a mobile phone or tablet instead of a normal desktop application, so i didn't had the incentive

[dkersten]

> Isn't that a JSON-like language?

It is (but its actually good!), but QtCreator also has a design tool to visually create QML-based UI's.

> I find describing UIs in text instead of "drawing" them like done in Lazarus to be going backwards.

This is a preference thing I guess - some people prefer visual design tools, some prefer text. I quite like QML's approach of giving me a simple declarative text description language and then providing me with a visual design tool to author it with if I prefer to do so.

> Most QtQuick programs i've seen look like something you'd see in a mobile phone or tablet instead of a normal desktop application

Early QtQuick was very much like this, but nowadays it has pretty good platform-style emulation (QtQuick Controls). How many applications use it, I don't know, especially nowadays that QtQuick has iOS and Android support. Also, since it gives you full styling freedom, I guess (for better or worse) many people make use of them rather than trying to look native. I've seen some very non-mobile style QtQuick applications too though, including desktop mail clients and such and they looked great.

[jcelerier]

You can do a lot of things graphically : http://blog.qt.io/blog/2017/05/24/qt-quick-designer-qt-creat...