Qt Designer plugin

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 18.10.11 14:25:13, Valentyn Pavliuchenko wrote:
> 2011/10/18 Andreas Pakulat <apaku at gmx.de>
> > On 17.10.11 23:21:24, Valentyn Pavliuchenko wrote:
> > > > But you shouldn't really use that plugin anyway, it may eat your
> > > > children, dog, cats and money :) Use the standalone Qt designer. Its
> > > > unmaintained since 2 years and never really worked properly.
> > >
> > > I don't care about my children, dogs, cats, money, etc. I just want
> > designer
> > > integration - this is a must for any modern IDE.
> >
> > No its not. I've been hacking quite some time now and the occassional
> > need for a gui-designer comes up mostly when layouts don't behave
> > logical or when needing a tool to quickly click together a mockup.
> > Neither of the cases needs an integration into the IDE.
> >
> 
> That's for you. I don't say that everyone needs that, but it's the tool
> required by many people.

Again, any numbers to back that up?

> > > P.S. Using separate Qt Designer sucks - first letter in IDE means
> > > Integrated.
> >
> > But the word "Integrated" doesn't tell anything about what is integrated
> > into the Development Environment ;P
> >
> 
> Ok, I will try to define an "ideal" IDE: when everything needed for
> development is properly integrated without a functionality loss. Do you
> agree with this definition? :)

Sure, but that still doesn't include a GUI designer since its undefined
what kind of 'development'. IDE doesn't necessarily mean "IDE for all
kinds of development".

> Apart from that, there's no integration in the plugin. It merely adds a
> > ton of actions/menus that look out of place and a bunch of toolviews
> > that similarly are out of place. Not to mention that the workspace
> > concept used by designer does not fit with kdevelop that good either.
> > There's no kind of real integration of the designer, like being able to
> > auto-complete in C++ for things set up in the .ui file. No support when
> > renaming sth. in either C++ or the ui file for the other side. etc.
> > Thats what Integrated really means in IDE, not that the IDE opens the
> > file embedded instead of in a separate top-level window.
> 
> I agree with you completely.
> This is not a real integration, but embedded designer is still IMHO better
> than external app. And can be treated as the starting point for real
> integration.

As history of the plugin tells, nobody wants to spend time on that,
though part of the problem is that qt's designer code is not really
designed for being integrated into arbitrary IDE's.

> >  > I bet it's one of the main reasons why people use QtCreator instead of
> > > KDevelop, even when it loses in language support.
> >
> > You have any evidence of that?
> 
> 
> Yes, I saw the people that use Qt Creator because of that.
> 
> FYI, I was recommending KDevelop where possible, but not everyone agreed.
> Summarizing what I've heard from people - their reasons for using Qt Creator
> instead of KDevelop are:
> - qmake with its simplicity (cmake is complex for newbies)

Indeed, qmake is very nice for small toy projects and (as Qt proves) it
can even be used for large real-world projects. But that comes at a
cost due to all the limitations qmake has. CMake or other cross-platform
buildtools are usually much better suited, in particular when it comes
to integrating external dependencies.

Andreas