Shader Variants, KDAB News, Styling Qt Widgets in Qt 5 & Qt 6 & more.

Welcome to our April Newsletter

It’s almost the merry month of May and to celebrate, we bring you Shader Variants: Explosions of the combinatorial kind. Following this we have KDAB News and our latest video releases including Styling Qt Widgets in Qt 5 and Qt 6.

Then we bring you some more of our animated 3D shorts, an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the release of talks from QtDevCon 2022 and a selection of Events this year.

But first: The CfP or Call for Papers for Qt Desktop Days, June 20th – 21st, Online only, is still open. We invite you to submit an abstract this weekend.

Shader Variants

Explosions of the combinatorial kind

by Sean Harmer

In what turned out to be a nice little excursion (for Sean, that is), of “simplifying a problem by changing it from recursive to linear and converting between numbers of different bases”, Sean explains why many variations of GPU shader programs are indeed necessary.

But also, how you can (mostly) avoid that blank screen by automatically compiling these along with your application using CMake.

Read the blog.

KDAB News in April

– featuring an interview with Axivion

The Qt Group acquired Axivion in 2022. In the latest edition of KDAB News, we asked Dr. Daniel Simon of Axivion and Jere Hurskainen of The Qt Group, what Axivion’s architecture analysis and static code analysis brings to the Qt offering. We also have news of Qt releases and some events you might want to take note of.

Watch the News.

Styling Qt Widgets in Qt 5 and Qt 6

– a new series with David Faure

Beginning with an overview: Solutions for Qt Widgets, David presents four different solutions for changing the visual (and interaction) style of Qt widgets:

• Using the QStyle API
• Using Qt Stylesheets (QSS)
• Writing Custom Widgets, &
• Writing Item Delegates.

This last (not pictured here) is presented by Jesper Pedersen in our Qt Widgets and More series.

This video series follows on from David’s blog, Saying no to Qt stylesheets.

Solutions for Styling Qt Widgets

Styling Qt Widgets Using Qt Stylesheets

Styling Qt Widgets with QStyle

Custom Qt Widgets: Implementing a Toggle Switch

A Programmer’s pot-pourri

Covering 3D, Qt and C++

Kuesa 3D SHORTS

These really are short! And include:

Master Files x Blender x Kuesa 3D – rapidly replace models for that last minute update before a release. Realtime 3D Mandelbrot x Custom Shader x Qt3D

– implement a realtime 3D Mandelbrot set using quaternions in a fragment shader.

Playlist to all of them.

QtDevCon 2022

There’s 25 excellent talks ranging from How to Survive Maintaining a Popular GitHub Project in Your Spare Time to How Modern Biotech Fights Cancer. If you missed these, now’s your chance.

Playlist of all the talks.

Hardening C++

Bjarne Stroustrup, the originator of C++, makes the case to Software Daily for what he sees as the long-term, reliable solution to the security issue currently shaking the foundations of C++, in a hard-hitting comprehensive interview.

Watch the interview.

Events this year

Here’s a selection of events coming up this year, with a reminder to catch the deadlines for talk submissions.

Qt Desktop Days, June 20 – 21

The event for Qt for the Desktop returns. Find out more and submit a talk by Sunday.

Free and Online only.

C++ on Sea, June 28 – 29

With with one day of workshops on the 27th. Check out the Full Schedule.

Where is it: Folkestone.

KDE Akademy, July 15 – 21

Organized annually by one of the largest Free Software communities in the world. It is free & non-commercial.

Where is it: Thessaloniki and Online.

SIGGRAPH, August 6 – 10

A big new logo for the 50th Anniversary of this premier event for computer graphics and interactive techniques. Some submission classes are still open. Check it out!

Where is it: Los Angeles.

Meeting C++, Nov 12 – 13

The dates are announced! Submit your talks! You have until June 15th.

Where is it: Berlin and Online.

Qt World Summit, Nov 28 – 29

Once more at the bcc. This is a live event only.

Where is it: Berlin.