Qt简史

Our Story

A conversation. That’s all it took. An honest, open and frank
discussion between two young developers – Haavard and Eirik – on a
park bench in the rare sunshine of a Norwegian summer’s day. The
problem was the user interface of an ultrasound machine, the need was
for a single system that worked across multiple platforms. And their
solution would eventually power millions of devices and applications
all over the world.

As two developers were joined by thousands more, the conversation
shifted, a playing field dominated by a few big players began to level
out and truly game-changing ideas started getting their day in the sun
too. From your favourite apps on all of your devices to groundbreaking
cars and the deep depths of space, Qt is there connecting a world of
innovation by making sure we speak the same language.

Now, after a journey of more than 20 years, we’re talking about more
than just a platform for developers, we’re talking about building a
community of collaborators who are all striving toward meaningful
change in their own industries – and far beyond. Because finally,
companies who truly value technology have the power to use software to
stand out from the crowd and a whole new generation of innovators who
believe in independence, transparency and privacy have the tools to
create a better connected world.

And we think that’s a conversation worth having.

以上摘自Qt官方

A Brief History of Qt

The Qt framework first became publicly available
in May 1995. It was initially developed by Haavard Nord (Trolltech’s
CEO) and Eirik Chambe-Eng (Trolltech’s president). Haavard and Eirik
met at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim, where they
both graduated with master’s degrees in computer science. Haavard’s
interest in C++ GUI development began in 1988 when he was commissioned
by a Swedish company to develop a C++ GUI framework. A couple of years
later, in the summer of 1990, Haavard and Eirik were working together
on a C++ database application for ultrasound images. The system needed
to be able to run with a GUI on Unix, Macintosh, and Windows. One day
that summer, Haavard and Eirik went outside to enjoy the sunshine, and
as they sat on a park bench, Haavard said, “We need an object-oriented
display system.” The resulting discussion laid the intellectual
foundation for the object-oriented cross-platform GUI framework they
would soon go on to build. In 1991, Haavard started writing the
classes that eventually became Qt, collaborating with Eirik on the
design. The following year, Eirik came up with the idea for “signals
and slots”, a simple but powerful GUI programming paradigm that has
now been embraced by several other toolkits. Haavard took the idea and
produced a hand-coded implementation. By 1993, Haavard and Eirik had
developed Qt’s first graphics kernel and were able to implement their
own widgets. At the end of the year, Haavard suggested that they go
into business together to build “the world’s best C++ GUI framework”.
The year 1994 began inauspiciously with the two young programmers
wanting to enter a well-established market, with no customers, an
unfinished product, and no money. Fortunately, both their wives were
employed and therefore able to support their husbands for the two
years Eirik and Haavard expected to need to develop the product and
start earning an income. The letter ‘Q’ was chosen as the class prefix
because the letter looked beautiful in Haavard’s Emacs font. The ‘t’
was added to stand for “toolkit”, inspired by Xt, the X Toolkit. The
company was incorporated on March 4, 1994, originally as Quasar
Technologies, then as Troll Tech, and today as Trolltech. In April
1995, thanks to a contact made through one of Haavard’s university
professors, the Norwegian company Metis gave them a contract to
develop software based on Qt. Around this time, Trolltech hired Arnt
Gulbrandsen, who during his six years at Trolltech devised and
implemented an ingenious documentation system as well as contributing
to Qt’s code. On May 20, 1995, Qt 0.90 was uploaded to
sunsite.unc.edu. Six days later, the release was announced on
comp.os.linux.announce. This was Qt’s first public release. Qt could
be used for both Windows and Unix development, offering the same API
on both platforms. Qt was available under two licenses from day one: A
commercial license was required for commercial development, and a free
software edition was available for open source development. The Metis
contract kept Trolltech afloat, while for ten long months no one
bought a commercial Qt license. In March 1996, the European Space
Agency became the second Qt customer, with a purchase of ten
commercial licenses. With unwavering faith, Eirik and Haavard hired
another developer. Qt 0.97 was released at the end of May, and on
September 24, 1996, Qt 1.0 came out. By the end of the year, Qt had
reached version 1.1; eight customers, each in a different country, had
bought 18 licenses between them. This year also saw the founding of
the KDE project, led by Matthias Ettrich. Qt 1.2 was released in April
1997. Matthias Ettrich’s decision to use Qt to build KDE helped Qt become the de facto standard for C++ GUI development on Linux. Qt 1.3
was released in September 1997. Matthias joined Trolltech in 1998, and
the last major Qt 1 release, 1.40, was made in September of that year.
Qt 2.0 was released in June 1999. Qt 2 had a new open source license,
the Q Public License (QPL), which complied with the Open Source
Definition. In August 1999, Qt won the LinuxWorld award for best
library/tool. Around this time, Trolltech Pty Ltd (Australia) was
established. Trolltech released Qtopia Core (then called Qt/Embedded)
in 2000. It was designed to run on embedded Linux devices and provided
its own window system as a lightweight replacement for X11. Both
Qt/X11 and Qtopia Core were now offered under the widely used GNU
General Public License (GPL) as well as under commercial licenses. By
the end of 2000, Trolltech had established Trolltech Inc.(USA) and had
released the first version of Qtopia, an application platform for
mobile phones and PDAs. Qtopia Core won the LinuxWorld “Best Embedded
Linux Solution” award in both 2001 and 2002, and Qtopia Phone achieved
the same distinction in 2004. Qt 3.0 was released in 2001. Qt was now
available on Windows, Mac OS X, Unix, and Linux (desktop and
embedded). Qt 3 provided 42 new classes and its code exceeded 500,000
lines. Qt 3 was a major step forward from Qt 2, including considerably
improved locale and Unicode support, a completely new text viewing and
editing widget, and a Perl-like regular expression class. Qt 3 won the
Software Development Times “Jolt Productivity Award” in 2002. In the
summer of 2005, Qt 4.0 was released. With about 500 classes and more
than 9000 functions, Qt 4 is larger and richer than any previous
version, and it has been split into several libraries so that
developers only need to link against the parts of Qt that they need.
Qt 4 is a huge advance on previous versions with improvements that
include a completely new set of efficient and easy-to-use template
containers, advanced model/view functionality, a fast and flexible 2D
painting framework, and powerful Unicode text viewing and editing
classes, not to mention thousands of smaller enhancements across the
complete range of Qt classes. Qt 4 is the first Qt edition to be
available for both commercial and open source development on all the
platforms it supports. Also in 2005, Trolltech opened a representative
office in Beijing to provide customers in China and the region with
sales services, training, and technical support for Qtopia. Since
Trolltech’s birth, Qt’s popularity has grown unabated and continues to
grow to this day. This success is a reflection both of the quality of
Qt and of how enjoyable it is to use. In the last decade, Qt has gone
from being a product used by a select few “in the know” to one that is
used daily by thousands of customers and tens of thousands of open
source developers all around the world.

Qt简史

Qt工具包最初是在1995年5月公开的。它最初是由Haavard Nord (Trolltech的 CEO) 和 Eirik
Chambe-Eng（Trolltech的总裁）。Haavard和Eirik在挪威的特隆赫姆技术学院相识，在那里他们都获得了计算机科学硕士学位。
Haavard对C++图形用户界面开发的兴趣始于1988年，当时他被一家瑞典公司委托设计开发一个C + +图形用户界面工具包。
几年后，在1990的夏天，Haavard和Eirik因为一个超声波图像方面的C++的数据库应用程序而在一起工作。这个系统共要求需要能够运行在UNIX，Macintosh和Windows系统上。在那个夏天的某一日，Haavard和Eirik出去散步享受阳光，当他们坐在公园的一个长椅上，Haavard说，“我们需要一个面向对象的显示系统。”由此引发的讨论奠定了他们即将创建的面向对象的多平台图形用户界面工具包的智力基础。
1991年，Haavard开始和Eirik合作设计、编写最终成为Qt的这些类。第二年，Eirik提出了“信号与槽”的设想——一个简单但功能强大的图形用户界面编程范例。Haavard实践了这个想法，并且建立了一个手写代码实现。到1993年，Haavard和Eirik已经开发出了Qt的第一个图形核心并且能够实现他们自己的窗口不见。同年末，Haavard提议他们一起开展并创建“世界上最好的C
+ +图形用户界面工具包”的业务。 1994年成为两个年轻的程序员不幸的一年，他们没有客户，没有资金，只有一个未完成的产品，却希望闯进一个稳定的市场。幸运的是，他们的妻子都有稳定的工作并且愿意支持他们的丈夫。在这两年里，Haavard和Eirik认为需要继续开发他们的产品并且开始盈利。
他们选择“Q”作为类的前缀是因为该字母在Haavard的Emacs字体中看起来很漂亮。“T”代表工具包（toolkit），是从“XT”，X工具包中获得的灵感。公司成立于1994年3月4日，最初名为Quasar
Technologies，然后更名为Troll Tech，现在改为Trolltech。
1995年4月，通过Haavard大学时的一个教授的联系，挪威Metis公司与他们签订一份基于Qt进行软件开发的合同。大约在同一时间，Trolltech聘请Arnt
Gulbrandsen，正是他设计并实现了一套有独创性的文档系统，并且对Qt的代码也做出了贡献。 1995年5月20日，Qt
0.90上传到sunsite.unc.edu。六天之后，在才comp.os.linux.announce上发布。这是Qt的第一次公开发布。QT可以被同时用于Windows和Unix平台上开发，它在这两种平台上提供相同的API。QT从第一天起就提供两种许可版本：一种是商业开发所需的商业许可版本，另一种是进行开源开发的自由软件版本。Metis的合同确保了Trolltech的发展，而十个月里没有人买了一个商业QT许可证。
1996年三月，欧洲航天局购买了十个商业Qt许可证，成为第二个Qt客户。凭借坚定不移的信念，Eirik和Haavard又雇用了另一个开发者。Qt
0.97在5月底发布，并且1996年9月24日，Qt 1.0面世。到这一年年底，QT已经发展到1.1版，共有来自八个不同国家的客户，他们购买了18份商业许可证。这一年在Matthias Ettrich的带领下，创立了KDE项目。 Qt 1.2在1997年四月发布。Matthias
Ettrich利用Qt建立KDE的决定使QT成为在Linux环境下开发C++图形用户界面的实际标准。Qt 1.3在1997年9月发布。
Matthias在1998年加入奇趣。当年9月最后一个Qt 1系列版本1.40发布。Qt 2发布于1999年6月。Qt
2.0有很多架构上的改变，比它的前几个版本功能更为强大，更为成熟。它还具备了40个新类和Unicode支持。Qt2有了一个新的开源许可，Q公共许可，它遵循了开源定义。在1999年8月，QT赢得了LinuxWorld的最佳的图书馆/工具奖。大约在这个时候，奇趣科技有限公司（澳大利亚）成立。
奇趣在2000年发布了Qt/Embedded。它被设计为可以运行在嵌入式Linux设备上，并且提供它自己的窗口系统作为X11轻型替代程序。现在qt
/
X11和Qt/Embedded除了提供商业许可之外，还可以提供被广泛使用的GUN通用公共许可。到2000年底，奇趣已经建立了奇趣公司（美国），并发布了第一个Qtopia版本，一个手持设备环境。Qt/Embedded在2001年和2002年两次获得LinuxWorld”最好的嵌入式Linux解决方案”奖。
Qt 3.0在2001年发布。现在QT可以用于Windows，Mac OS X和Linux，Unix（桌面和嵌入式）。Qt
3.0提供了42个新类和超过500000行代码。Qt 3.0是Qt 2向前迈出的重要一步，包括改善Unicode支持，一个全新的文本浏览和编辑控件，和一个类似Perl的正则表达式的类。Qt
3在2002年赢得了Jolt Productivity奖。 在2005的夏天，Qt 4发布。有500类和9000多种功能，Qt
4比任何以前的版本更大和更丰富的，它已被分为几个不同的库，开发人员只需要链接对QT的部分。Qt
4是在先前版本的改进，包括全新的一套高效和易于使用的模板的容器，先进的模型/视图功能，快速和灵活的2D画框架，和强大的Unicode文本浏览和编辑类。Qt
4是第一个QT版可用于商业和开放源代码开发的所有它支持的平台上。
在2005，奇趣在北京开设一个办事处，它负责向该地区的客户提供培训，技术支持。
自从奇趣诞生以来，QT的人气已经持续增长直至今日。取得这样的成绩说明了Qt的高质量，人们都喜欢使用它。在过去的十年中，QT已经从一个只被少数专业人士所知的产品，发展到如今编辑全世界的上千个客户以及上万个开源开发人员。