Qt Based Programs

Qt is a product of Troll Tech.

I started using Qt to port programs from the Macintosh to Unix and Windows 95/NT that I use in the classes I teach. I looked for a long time for a package/library that would let me support both Unix for our public computing labs and allow students to run the code at home. The following programs have been ported so far:

• Truss Solver: 2-D Structural Analysis of Trusses.
• Xorient: X-Ray orientation calculation program

Gf Port to Qt

I have finally gotten to porting Gf, an almost WYSIWYG plotting package, to Qt. It still works very similar to the X based version (Gfx) so see its doc pages for an intro to Gf. The Qt port has several new features and of course some new bugs.

New Features:

• Windows 95/98/NT version.
• Extended File format, all the color, line type and other format information is saved in the file. The extended file format is backward compatable with other versions of Gf. This extended file format also makes it unnecessary to set the file format (called profile on previous versions) before an extended format file is read.
• Improved delimited (space, tab or comma) file format support. Now you can use the delimited file format and not lose any functionality.
• Cut, Copy and Paste of curve data, ASCII output to system clipboard (tab delimited). Click on same point twice to select the whole curve.
• Multiple active Gf windows.
• Postscript output is the same as before, written by the application and not thru any driver (to get very clean postscript output).
• Comments can be put at a location fixed by data values.
• Much nicer interface, which includes the normal browsable file open/save dialogs.
• Written in C++, the GfFile data class makes it easy to add Gf file read/write support to an application. A Gf Qt widget also makes it easy in include the graphics display in other applications.
• TeX like formatting and text font and size selections display correctly on the screen.
• Direct Printing to any system printer (Windows) -- not as nice as internally generated postscript saved to file.
• Data can be edited or entered using the Data item on the Edit menu.

Changes from X-Windows version:

• Multiple curves on the screen now default to all black instead of cycled colors. This is because the color of the curves on the screen now match the PS output settings.
• Invec (see Gfx Man page Data format section) values of 0 only start new curves. A number of symbol data points together are treated as one curve.
• Ordering of linetypes and linewidths has been changed from that on Gfx dialogs.
• Line types with dots have been removed (I never liked them). All but one line type (long dashes) are WYSIWYG on the screen.
• Profile settings are split between the File Format and Plot Options dialogs.
• Linear curve fit is now under "Selection Stats" on the Edit menu.
• Data Transformations have "Undo."

Bugs:

• Direct printing under Windows and X11 is not as nice as Postscript saved to a file. Windows is worse than X11 in this regard. Note that saving to a file under Windows with direct printing is not supported (by Qt).
• Many no doubt, that's why its version 0.0.x! Please let me know if you find one.

Changes for version 0.0.26

• Comment data positions now read back in from files.

Download of Current Version 0.0.26

• SGI Irix 6.x executable (790kB) download (shift click) built with irix-DCC-shared
• Windows 95/98/NT executable (626kB) download (static executable)
• Linux Glibc (lib6) executable (250 kB) download (shift click) built with linux-g++-shared on an i386.
• Source code: gfqt-0.0.26.tar.gz. This code is copyleft'ed under the GNU General Public License.

Required Libaries

GfQt is currently written for Qt version 1.44. On the SGI and Linux platforms you must have the Qt Libraries installed. These are available from Troll Tech's anonymous ftp server. Most Linux distributions have Qt available as a binary package. No libraries are required for the Windows version.

Other codes

I have also written a few other utilities in Qt and plan to port my Gfx, Psall and Framex programs to Qt as well. The utilities so far are:

• ViewCd: Directory Viewer for Rockridge CD's under Windows. Allows copies of files with correct (long) filenames, with explorer like cut/paste interface (very crude).
• TextView: Unix text file viewer for Windows. Does Cr/Lf conversions.
• QtSplit: Splits large files up for transport on removable media. Does a simple checksum to verify the joined result. Source includes a Win95/NT executable.

If you are interested in these programs send me an e-mail if I have not already put the source up on this page.