Core KDE developer Daniel Molkentin has written a book about Trolltech's cross-platform application development toolkit. Published by NoStarch Press, and entitled, “The Book of Qt 4,” the work aims to help novice and advanced users write user-friendly Qt applications.

(Click for larger view of Qt 4 book cover)

Qt is a mature C++ application development framework designed to let software engineers compile native-looking Linux, Mac, and Windows binaries from a single source code tree. Some of the better-known applications based on Qt include Skype, Google Earth, and Adobe Photoshop Elements. Additionally, Motorola uses an embedded version of Qt — Qtopia Core (formerly “Qt/Embedded”) — in its Linux-based mobile phones. Qt and Qt/embedded were released under the GPL in 2000.

Qt also underpins KDE (KDE desktop environment), a popular desktop application framework for Linux. As a core KDE developer for seven years, book author Daniel Molkentin helped port KDE's core libraries to Qt4, and also maintains several popular KDE applications, including the Kontacts contact manager.

Molkentin uses practical examples to teach readers about features that go “beyond the common focus on C++ programming,” according to publisher NoStarch Press. With an eye toward helping programmers create user-friendly applications, Molkentin guides users through the signal/slot concept and the event system, and offers hints about using Qt's datatypes, containers, and algorithms. He discusses Qt app development with or without Trolltech's Qt Designer GUI builder.

Topics include:

• Tools for creating dialogs
• Widget layout and dialog construction
• Data visualization using Qt's model/view concept
• The QtSql module and the graphics library Arthur
• File handling, XML, processes, and network connections
• Databases and threading; event handling and drag and drop
• Internationalization and debugging

Availability

The 440-page Book of Qt 4: The Art of Building Qt Applications is available now in bookstores, or direct from NoStarch, priced at $55. A sample chapter on the QtSQL Module (PDF download) is also available.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.