From:	 info@trolltech.com
To:	 qt-interest@trolltech.com
Subject: Qt 3.0.0 Beta6 released
Date:	 Mon, 1 Oct 2001 12:14:16 +0200

This is the sixth beta version of Qt 3.0.

This new generation of the Qt application development framework
contains many new features, improvements and extensions. It also
includes a significantly improved Qt Designer, and introduces Qt
Linguist, Qt Assistant and a new multi-platform build tool, 'qmake'.

It is highly unlikely that the Qt API will undergo any significant
changes before the final release, so we encourage you to begin using
Qt 3.0 right away.

Detailed information about the modifications and new features for Qt
3.0 is included in the Online Reference Documentation.  For a brief
overview, see http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/30pre.html

One significant change in this beta is the removal of QCom (Qt's
component model) from the public API.

Previous Qt 3.0 betas introduced a module called QCom that provides a
COM-like component system. The feedback we received on this module
during the 3.0 beta phase has been mixed. Many users think this module
lacks the intuitiveness and compactness that they have learned to
expect from a Qt API. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision
to withdraw the QCom API from the Qt 3.0 release. We will continue to
develop this API until it is evolved enough for our customers, and
will include the improved version in a later release.

We apologize for any inconvenience the QCom API change has
caused. This decision was made as part of our ongoing efforts to
maintain the soundness and quality of Qt.

Please note that the new plugin functionality in 3.0 will still be
provided. This includes using custom widgets in Qt Designer, as well
as runtime addition of styles, codecs, SQL drivers, and image format
handlers. This functionality is now available through a substantially
simplified API.

Also also note that it will still be convenient to add custom plugin
capabilities to Qt 3.0 applications, since the new QLibrary class will
still be available. This class takes care of the low-level,
platform-dependent issues regarding loading of DLLs and obtaining
pointers to the functions exported by the DLLs.

Because of our recently increased development team, we have been able
to realize far more of your requests in this release. Qt 3.0 is a
great step towards realizing our vision of an ideal cross-platform
development tool.

The Qt version 3.x series is not binary compatible with the 2.x
series. This means programs compiled with Qt version 2.x must be
recompiled to work with Qt 3.0.

Qt 3.0 will be mostly, but not completely, source compatible with the
Qt 2.x series. See the document "Porting from Qt 2.x to Qt 3.0" in the
Online Reference Documentation for information on how to port an
existing Qt 2.x-based program to Qt 3.0. Disclaimer: the guide is not
entirely complete, so it is possible that you'll discover issues that
are not yet covered in the documentation.

Because of the many improvements and extensions and the few parts of
the API which are still being finalized, we expect this beta period to
last longer than what you are typically used to from Trolltech. Unlike
previous Qt releases where most of the beta testing was done with
snapshot releases, this beta is not yet a final release candidate.

The most visible change for long term Qt users is the reworked build
system. On MS-Windows, unpack the package and start installer.exe; on
Unix, unpack the package and run ./configure. Compiling and installing
Qt uses a new utility 'qmake' which we recommend for writing Qt­based
applications. 'qmake' is the successor of our free software add-on
'tmake', and is written using Qt rather than Perl. 'qmake' is fully
compatible with 'tmake'.

To improve maintainaibility between different platforms, all specific
platform #defines and #includes have been moved out of the Qt sources
into a platform specific qplatformdefs.h file.  The files are located
in qt/mkspec/<platform>-<compiler>/qplatformdefs.h. For this beta
release, the following platforms have been tested:

win32-borland
win32-msvc

irix-o32
irix-n32
irix-g++
tru64-cxx
tru64-g++
solaris-cc
solaris-g++
linux-g++
linux-kcc
freebsd-g++
unixware7-g++
unixware7-cc
aix-g++
aix-xlc
hpux-acc
hpux-g++

If you test the beta on an an unsupported version of Unix, please
contact us that we can assist you.


How to get the beta release:

Qt Free Edition: Download the .tar.gz archive from
ftp.trolltech.com. To get better download times, use ftpsearch and
search for qt-x11-free-3.0.0-beta6.tar.gz to find it on a mirror ftp
site near you.

Qt Professional Edition, Qt Enterprise Edition: Holders of valid
licenses should have received an e-mail with instructions on how to
get the beta. Contact sales@trolltech.com if you are a Professional or
Enterprise Edition licensee and have not received this e-mail.


Any problems encountered with the beta version should be reported to
qt-bugs@trolltech.com, or to the snapshot-users mailing list.

Qt is a trademark of Trolltech AS.

-- 
The Trolls

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