Project: Qt for OS/2 and eComStation
Introduction
Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, which is widely used as a widget toolkit for developing GUI programs but also for console tools and servers. Using Qt, developers can write applications once and deploy them across many desktop and embedded operating systems without having to rewrite the source code. See Qt at Wikipedia and the Qt homepage.
Availability for OS/2 and eComStation both means that developers can easily port a large number of existing Qt applications and create new ones more easily than with standard PM programming or the outdated, buggy IBM Open Class Library.
Qt 3 has been available for OS/2 and eComStation for several years now and enabled developers to port applications like Virtual Box, SMPlayer, LyX, or Scribus. However, Qt has evolved and Qt 4 was introduced a while ago. While new applications use this new version from the start, also an increasing number of existing applications have been making the switch. Thus arose the need to update the framework.
The Qt 4 Project
The Qt4 project now aims at making the latest version 4.5 available for OS/2 and eComStation. For this purpose, netlabs.org hired Dmitry A. Kuminov (aka dmik), who already ported version 3 of the toolkit to the OS/2 and eComStation platform, as a developer while Silvan Scherrer acts as project manager.
Status and Progress
Qt 4 for OS/2 and eComStation v 4.5 is GA since February 2010.
Qt 4 for OS/2 and eComStation v 4.6 is GA since May 2010.
Qt 4 for OS/2 and eComStation v 4.7 is GA since September 2011.
A number of applications, tools, and games has been ported.
Detailed information about the status, change history, and the roadmap are always available at the Qt 4 project's TRAC site.
Contributing
There are several ways to contribute to the project:
- Providing funding by buying sponsor units
- Testing the framework by porting and creating applications
- Testing ported applications
- Writing documentation
- Maintaining the web site(s)
- Creating WarpIN packages
Funding
The project is mainly funded by contributions from members of the OS/2 and eComStation community.
The initial estimate was a timeframe of approximately five months and 9000 Euro for the complete port, building on the existing Qt 3 port as far as possible. Ongoing work on the project has shown that some heavy design changes require complete reimplementation of certain parts. One additional month will be required at least, resulting in a corrected sum of 11000 Euro. As most of you probably saw, we reached GA. But this GA still lacks some features. We have completed the first stage of the Qt 4 port and now we want to get to version 4.6 with printing support, please keep donating funds to this project. To get printing support and Qt 4.6.2 we need additional 2500 Euro.
Please consider donating to the project! To do so, you can buy sponsor units at the Mensys online shop. All donations will be completely transferred to netlabs.org.
Donations Received so far (1. March 2010) for Qt4 GA
| Euro | No. of Units | Price per Unit | Via |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9000 | 180 | 50 | Mensys |
| 1520 | 76 | 20 | Mensys |
| 500 | 1 | 500 | directly |
| 11020 | total | 100% | of required sum |
Donations Received so far (31. May 2010) for Qt4 4.6 & Printing
| Euro | No. of Units | Price per Unit | Via |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2100 | 42 | 50 | Mensys |
| 400 | 20 | 20 | Mensys |
| 2500 | total | 100% | of required sum |
Donations Received so far (3. January 2012) for Qt4 4.7 & Qt Enhanced
| Euro | No. of Units | Price per Unit | Via |
|---|---|---|---|
| 900 | 18 | 50 | Mensys |
| 340 | 17 | 20 | Mensys |
| 1240 | total | of required sum |
Sponsors of Euro 100 and more
- Herwig Bauernfeind
- Cristiano Guadagnino
- Peter Long
- Andreas Buchinger
- Silvan Scherrer
- PAOLO ASTORI SPA
- Peter Verweij
- Michael Greene
- Paul Smedley (he got the money from OS/2 UA Switzerland and donated it to Qt, he also donated by himself
- A-Net GmbH
- Alexander Taylor
- Heinz Meisetschlaeger
- www.os2site.com
- Dieter Wachsmuth
- Rücker Gas-Sanitär-Heizungs-GmbH
- Bilringen A/S
- Team OS/2 Ruhr e.V.
- Michael Holzapfel
- Peter Zimmermann
- Andreas Ludwig
- Wolf Moehl
- Bjorn Rietdijk
- Oliver Cremer
- Gabriele Gamba
- J. Nijenhuis
- Per E. Johannessen
- David McKenna
- Anchieri Giulio Mario
- Cheng-Yang Tan
- Hermann Ulrichskötter
- Juergen Ulbts
- Mike Kölling
- Jan-Erik Laerka
- Louis McKinley
- Fsys Software
- Dante Nishida
- U. Fraenzel
- Stefan Zigulec
- C. Fields
- Druckerei Sedlmayr
- Steve Wendt
- Bruce Rossi
- Oliver Cremer
- Microdome
- Elbert Pol
- David Oakford
- SH Visser
- Mark Dodel
- Studler
- Marco Pauls
- Thomas Mueller
- Holger Veith
Contact
To report bugs, please use the bug tracker at the project trac site.
Project discussion is done through mailing list conversations. Currently, the following mailing lists are available:
- qt-dev()netlabs.org (send an e-mail to qt-dev-subscribe()netlabs.org to subscribe, or go to http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.org.netlabs.qt.devel for online reading)
This mailing list is for developers of Qt for eCS (OS/2). All ticket changes are automatically posted to this list. Please don't post user questions there!
