Qt 5.11 has been released ahead of the planned schedule. Qt is one of the most popular cross-platform software development framework for embedded and desktop applications.
It holds a variety of new features and bug fixes.
Qt for Web assembly and Python
Qt for Web assembly version 1 has been released to allow users to target the web and browsers as a platform for Qt applications. In addition, Qt is actively working on supporting Qt on Python and the first release is planned for June.
Qt Core and Network
Both the Qt Core and item model have received a couple of updates. Most importantly, Qt Core now has Unicode support. So, QChar, QString, QTextBoundaryFinder and Qt algorithm for bidirectional text are now fully compatible with Unicode 10. In the Qt network, ALPN and HTTP/2 are now supported on iOS.
Qt GUI and Widgets
Accessibility support on Windows is now based on Microsoft UI automation. Widget styles on Windows are also updated to better support High-DPI displays. Qt widgets have received support for quick text selection by mouse in QLineEdit, along with a number of bug-fixes. The print dialog on Linux now also features much better support for all the CUPS provided options.
Qt QML Engine
The Qt QML compiler pipeline is completely re-written with major improvements in performance and maintainability. This pipeline always compiles QML to a platform-independent bytecode. You can also generate the bytecode ahead of time, using the qmlcompiler feature. The new bytecode interpreter has vastly improved and reaches 80-90% of the performance of the JIT in Qt 5.10.
Qt Quick
Qt Quick, now supports loading compressed textures in the image element. As this feature stores images in a format that is directly digestible by the GPU, it reduces application startup time and memory consumption. Qt Quick also supports both .ktx and .pkm container file formats.
Qt Location
Qt Location now includes experimental support for turn-by-turn navigation. It also has an experimental API to create map objects that are not bound to QQuickItems. In MapPolyline objects, layers are now working in combination with Map items. Routing and Places API are extensible and there is a newly added element, known as WayPoint.
Qt 3D and Qt 3D Studio
Qt 3D Studio 2.0 is currently in beta and the complete release will soon be available with a fully rewritten runtime, that’ll be based on top of Qt 3D. With this work, Qt 3D has also received numerous new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes.
Qt Webengine
The Chromium version underneath Qt Webengine has been updated to Chromium 65. In addition, Qt now supports embedded DevTools without requiring the use of a separate browser, an installable cookie filter and quota permissions.
Other items
- qdoc now uses libclang to parse C++ giving a much better support for modern C++ in the documentation.
- Qt Serialbus and Bluetooth have now improved support for CAN bus and BTLE.
To read the complete coverage, visit the release notes page. Qt 5.11 free version will be supported for one year. For longer support periods, developers should prefer Qt 5.9 which will be supported until June 2020. An extended lifetime support can be purchased from the Qt Company if required. The next release, Qt 5.12 is planned for November and will be a long-term supported release.
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