Monthly Digest
Welcome to our November Newsletter
Be of good cheer! It may be cold and dark but it’s a good time to hunker down and find out NEW STUFF! So wrap up and read on, there’s plenty of that here . . .
We bring you the first in a new blog series: Projection Matrices with Vulkan – Part 1, How transformations differ from OpenGL to Vulkan, followed by Supercharging VS Code with C++ Extensions, which enlarges upon last month’s blog.
Then we offer a whitepaper, Software Updates Outside the App Store, a manual for KDDockWidgets, a video interview: Why Rust?, two releases: CXX-Qt and Slint 1.3, and some great news on KDAB Training, including the first online module in the Introduction to Qt Widgets course. Enjoy!
Projection Matrices with Vulkan – Part 1
How Transformations differ from OpenGL to Vulkan
by Sean Harmer
When someone with an OpenGL background begins using Vulkan, one of the very common outcomes – beyond the initial one of “OMG how much code does it take to draw a triangle?” – is that the resulting image is upside down.
In this blog, Sean offers to solve this issue “with the bonus of actually understanding what is going on”. Now, there’s a challenge for you!
Supercharging VS Code with C++ Extensions
by Nicolas Arnaud-Cormos and Sérgio Martins
In a previous blog we demonstrated the most straightforward method to optimize Visual Studio Code for a Qt / C++ environment: simply let the tools do all the work!
The example GitHub project we discussed automatically installs both the Microsoft C/C++ and clangd extensions into VS Code. You might wonder why you need both C++ extensions. The short answer is that having both will maximize your productivity in every situation… but read on for more detail.
Software Updates Outside the App Store
a Software Development Best Practices Whitepaper
You might have missed that we’ve been building up a store of useful software development tips and techniques for you in our Software Development Best Practices Whitepapers, but even if you didn’t, you might be interested in our latest addition: Software Updates Outside the App Store.
To learn what engineering teams should consider when planning their update strategy, we’ve consulted with our internal experts as well as our partner Mender that specializes in over-the-air (OTA) updates. Each of us has contributed best practices and insights gleaned from many customer engagements and difficult engineering challenges. This whitepaper primarily focuses on embedded devices because they often require the most work to address. However, many of these considerations is also relevant to other software systems that operate outside the main app stores.
KDDockWidgets gets a manual
KDDockWidgets creator, Sérgio Martins, has released a full-scale manual on Github for the popular docking framework that enables you to implement advanced functionalities missing in Qt.
Why Rust?
We talk to Florian Gilcher and Till Adam in KDAB News
Last month we welcomed Till Adam, CCO at KDAB, and Florian Gilcher, CEO at Ferrous Systems, to get up close and personal about Rust in our KDAB News channel. You can see the interview at about 1 minute in.
Cxx-Qt 0.6 released
Talking of Rust, CXX-Qt is a set of Rust crates for creating bidirectional Rust ⇄ C++ bindings with Qt.
For 0.6, we’re excited to announce that we’re on the road to stabilization! We’ve done a (hopefully final) iteration of our API and are now happier than ever to release it.
Find out more about the extensive developer-facing changes in the blog.
Slint 1.3 Released
Slint is a declarative GUI toolkit and yes, it’s built with Rust, for creating native user interfaces for Rust, C++ or JavaScript apps. We’ve been following Slint’s development closely and are glad to see the enhancements this release offers, including new native styles on Windows and Mac.
Read the release blog to find out more.
KDAB Training gets a new home
KDAB has been the leading provider of Qt trainings for nigh on 25 years, which means if you applied for a Qt course back in the early days, you probably needed to book a course via a landline, and we offered Qt and only Qt. Well, the world’s been through a few changes since then and so has KDAB, as our new streamlined website and training portfolio attests.
We hope you’ll find the new site informative, easy to navigate, and most importantly, that the KDAB training portfolio offers you what you’re looking for, be it an introductory or advanced level course in Qt/QML, Modern C++, OpenGL/3D, Developer Tools, Debugging and Profiling or our most recent addition: Rust.
As for Qt Widgets, which is where it all began for us, we’re now creating a free, online set of modules out of the extensive training material for this course. See the next feature!
Introduction to Qt Widgets – online
Jesper lets the Q[a]t out of the bag
Why now?
Whilst many new users are favouring Qt/QML over the original Qt Widgets these days, there are still a lot of teams working on existing large scale applications written in Qt Widgets.
New people join those teams regularly, but rarely enough at one time to fill a training course, so they end up having to try to learn Qt on their own from resources online.
But piecing together a coherent and correct picture of such a complex toolkit as Qt is a challenging task.
This is why we decided to help by providing, entirely for free, the KDAB training that has got tens of thousands of Qt developers up to speed over the last few decades.
We’ll be releasing these in modules, at a pace that allows you to assimilate the material, until we’re done. Likely over 100 episodes in all.
Module 1 is out now.
You’re welcome!
Events
By the time you read this, the November events will be over. We look forward to bringing you news from Meeting C++, KDAB Training Day, Qt World Summit and Qt Contributor Summit next month, as well as news about next year’s events.
Toradex makes it to 20 years
Finally, a shout out to our partner Toradex, who made it to 20 years this month.
Thanks for all the cool gear, Toradex! Keep it coming!
