Customer Reviews

C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I found myself pretty disappointed with this book contents. From book reviews I read, I expected clean, concise and self-contained explanation of Qt features. The book is indeed covering most of Qt features, but presentation style is - well, confusing. Namely, for the most parts, book chapters are explanations of rather large code fragments, that often have nothing to do with Qt. Reader is thus forced to take non-insignificant effort to understand these parts of code (that are in turn often incomplete, so it is necessary to look-up full source code from CD all the time), so understanding of Qt-specific topics has necessary to be blurred with this. For example, immediately after showing hello-world like program in first chapter, authors are jumping into development of full-blown Excell-like application in next three chapters. While it is indeed still toy application, it is not particularly funny to follow more than 1000 lines of code in this place (much more appropriate would be to have alike examples in later parts of book, once when most of Qt features covered with small and simple examples, or even as appendices). Things are getting worse toward end of book, with full sections of code completely irrelevant to topic. For example, at the end of chapter eight, an example of using OpenGL along with Qt is presented and this application implements picking support that is considered advanced topic even by OpenGL texts. This fragment of code is completely unnecessary, since authors already demonstrated usage of Qt mouse events for interaction with scene when they added support for rotating scene using mouse click-and-drag. Yet, the fragment is there and "explanation" of this code boils down to "you know, it's a bit complicated". Now, luckily I knew OpenGL so I was able to understand this code, but on many other places I had lots of problems to track the code (when reading a book, I really don't like to take any part of sample code for granted, even if I advised in text to do so, because I always have a feeling that I don't understand something later because of this) that really has nothing to do with my learning of Qt. To put it simply, this text is suffering from authors "look how smart our programs are" attitude and this is pity, because it could be really great text only if they opted for more step-by-step approach, as demonstrated regarding GUI programming by Petzold's Programming Windows series (and I hate to state this, I'm UNIX programmer). Still, if one is experienced C++ programmer and already had a contact with Qt (Qt tutorials are far from being perfect, but still good introduction to the world of Qt programming), then he could definitely benefit from this book. Further, as some of reviewers already stated, accompanying CD is invaluable resource because of non-commercial version of Qt 3 for Windows supplied, so overall value for money for this book is good.

The book nicely introduces and covers a wide variety of Qt topics with real world examples. The first six chapters provide a very solid grounding in Qt. The standout chapters are the first chapter which provides an easy introductory ramp, the third chapter which covers modeless application development by using a spreadsheet as an example, and the sixth chapter which covers layout management. All of the chapters are worthwhile but those stand out as justifying the purchase price of the book. The writing style is clean and fairly terse so the reasonably advanced reader should get it on the first go, while the beginner may need a pass or two.

The shortcomings are minor. There is no reference portion to the book and while I understand that a full reference would add a significant bulk to the book a class reference with brief descriptions for each method would be appreciated. There is one large reference graphic that shows the class structure of the library. Syntax highlighting, especially on the large code fragments, would have been appreciated.

A quality work for anyone looking to develop on Qt, well worth the expense.

First of all, I must say that I pestered Mark hard to write this book. When Mark told me that Trolltech had sanctioned the work and asked me to be one of the external reviewers, I agreed immediately.

This book is an ideal way to ease yourself into the joy of Qt programming. You know you've decided to use Qt because of all the good things you've heard about it around the net, and the buzz it creates. Or perhaps you're writing free software on Linux. Or, perhaps you're like me, and use Qt as a competetive advantage in your day job, not feeling one bit sorry for the MFC programmers of this world. Whatever your motive for using Qt, this is a darn good book to own.

When you start in a new environment, you need a helping hand because you can feel lost. This book guides you by starting with the basics, that of getting a simple Qt program working, and proceeds to expand its use of the Qt framework as you become familiar with your surroundings.

The work takes simple applications and describes, thoroughly, what each section of code does and how it does it. It teaches software reuse by taking components developed early in the book and using them in new applications, extending them as needed.

Qt isn't just about aesthetically pleasing user interfaces: Qt is a real application framework, something that deals with files, sockets, and network programming. This book covers it all. From XML, a vital new technology, using both SAX and DOM models, to network programming using sockets. And, if you're so inclined, a portable way to write OpenGL applications.

This book also presents a behind-the-scenes view of Qt, and takes time to describe the rationale behind the design decisions made by the Trolltech team.

Being completely objective, it would have been nice to enjoy a little more content related to Qt/Embedded and Qtopia, but this is a minor quibble as the target is readers for the desktop product. Who knows, perhaps Mark and Jasmin are already hatching plans to write such a sequel?

When I say that every Qt programmer should own this book, it's true. This book won't be shelfware, it's a book that you can use over and over again. And I'm quite sure that this book will now become standard issue for all Qt courses, wherever they are held.

Well done Mark and Jasmin!

This book covers the whole Qt 3 programming, from the
simplest "Hello" program up to sophisticated user interaction.
Although being a seasoned software developer with several years
of Qt programming experience, I was able to learn new things
by reading this excellent book.

I've been programming in perl for a little while now, waiting to take the next step to c++. This book cought my eye because of the words "Open Source" on the cover. I then saw that Bruce Parens is having a series of books published on a type of open source license. While part of me wanted to wait for it to come out in electronic form because I'm a recent graduate with no job (though an interview... crosses fingers), I really wanted to take full advantage of my unemployed time doing something productive. (Like open source coding) So I bought the book.

Initially there are a lot of similarities to the online documentation and online tutorials that you can get from trolltech's site. But that's really just in the first chapter. The beginning of the book is a walkthrough of the programming of a spreadsheet program.

There are some bad points however... as a novice programmer, I thought they should have gone over the design process a little more. However, if you are familiar with designing a GUI program and just want to learn how to code stuff in QT and the online docs don't quite cut it, then this is the book for you. While I haven't found any errors yet, I have found that certain things aren't explained all that well. (like this referring to the parent widget... they never really explained that) However, as a novice, I was able to answer all my questions with the online documentation, it just forces you to look up a few things outside of the book.

The idea of signals and slots is pretty ingenious and the book covers how to use them quite well. I'm very happy that trolltech gives away qt free to Open Source developers. It's very well put together and I wouldn't hesitate in using it in a proprietary application (after paying appropriate license fees). Being free for Open Source isn't what makes qt popular, being easy and fun to use is. I think we'll be seeing a lot more qt in the future.

So if you feel that the online documentation is pretty good and are skilled at using qt's assistant program then you probably don't need this book. However, if you can't find good enough documentation on something like Database connectivity (like me) then this book will really help you.

I was given a few weeks to port several applications from other windowing systems to Qt. I had never used Qt before.

This book, along with the Qt Assistant online documentation, were all I needed. I was astonished at how relevant almost every page of this book was to my tasks.

The examples of displaying data in a table, employing double-buffered graphics, parsing and creating XML, adding OpenGL, multithreading, using sockets, creating custom events, and accessing a database were all almost copy-and-pasted into my final applications. Even the esoteric information on selecting an object from an OpenGL widget was useful.

Maybe my needs were just particularly well covered by the material in this book, but it's more likely that the authors have carefully chosen a wide range of examples that prove to be extremely useful in real-world applications.

This is the best book in Qt.I have all of Qt's book but it's best.

Sir's:
This book is very good, but needs more. How about a chapter on definitions or maybe better, a new book on nothing but definitions in C++.

"C++ GUI Programming with GT 3" Is an good book for an experienced Linux programmer. Most of the examples do compile properly on SuSe Linux 10.1. However, database connections are difficult to configure for MySql.

Appended: Sept 2, 2006: The book's binding came unglued and pages started falling out after less than a month of use. I have found that others are correct in that the code in the book is, to say the least, a bit comfusing. I have been working with computers regularly since the 1980's and have worked with most versions of Windows and many versions of Linux. Amended: I would not reccomend this book.

The Windows Qt 3 software did not fully install on my Windows 2000 machine. This book is difficult for me to use as an advanced beginning programmer and is not for everyone.

This book is not a tutorial that takes one over every step of the road. It takes a lot of time to understand how QT works, but it is worth it. If you have the new QT 4, you will need the new book on GT 4.

In order to compile a standalone program using GT 3 in Linux, one must use a terminal. And qmake must be installed in the right place. To test for qmake: open a terminal or C prompt and type qmake -v If you get the version number and some other info, you are good to go. If not, search for it and copy it to /usr/bin for Linux and try again. Or install qmake or reinstall QT 3, if it cannot be found.

To compile your program into an exe. Simply open a terminal and locate the file you created, Ex: hello.cpp, and type qmake -project then press enter. Then type dir and press enter. Find the file with the .pro extension. Let's say it is hello.pro. Now type qmake hello.pro then press enter. Finally just type make and press enter. Fix any errors and try again until it completes the MakeFile.

After the make command finishes, Go to the file using a file search "not" a text editor, such as Kate or Open Office, because it will open the file as a binary and not execute the program. After locating the file click on the gear Icon and the program will execute on the desktop if all is done correctly.

I hope this helps.

I'm glad my company bought the book and I didn't waste my own money on it. I'm back looking for a better book now. Writing style is terse. Very scant operational discussion about what is going on behind the scenes with UIC and MOC. The only reason I gave two stars is because I did use one of the examples in the book for production use, heavily modified. Otherwise the book is dry, humorless, and uninspiring. Buy it only if you are using someone else's money.