Qt previews iOS version of toolkit

Qt Quick 1's Cinematic demo running on an iPad.
Source: Qt Project The Qt developers at Digia have announced that they will be previewing the iOS port of Qt in Qt 5.1. The plan is to support Qt on iOS in Qt 5.2 which is due in late 2013; however, that plan is subject to change depending on resources and app store restrictions. So far the developers have a build process that works in conjunction with Xcode and working support for widgets, graphics view, Qt Quick 1, OpenGL, Touch events and orientation events.

Challenges that the developers are working around on iOS include the lack of a styling library like that found on Mac OS X; this means no plug-in style, but support for Qt cross-platform styles will be available. Another issue is that the developers cannot deploy the V8 JavaScript engine, as used by Qt Quick 2, on iOS because of its use of a just-in-time compiler: iOS applications are not allowed to generate and execute code. This means that, until a solution is found, there will be no Qt Quick 2 on iOS.

The preview code was merged last week and can be accessed by checking out the Qt source code now; in the announcement, the developers give instructions how to check out the code and build a demo and Qt Quick for devices or for a simulator.

(djwm)