Question

I’m developing a C++ application that needs a GUI. I would like to use the Windows 7 Ribbon Framework, so I’m not interested in having my app compatible with OS different that windows. I would like to also use my preferred IDE, Visual Studio 2010 and obviously I would like to use standard C++ things like std::string, etc. I saw that there is Qt, it seems cool but as I understand I shoud use it with their own compiler because they provide some things that are not part of the standard c++ (slots keyword for example). Plus, I saw that I can use a QWinHost to host win32 controls but I’m not sure if I can host the ribbon control. Should I implement myself a little library to simply manage native win32 controls or should I go with Qt?

Answer 1

but as I understand I shoud use it with their own compiler

Nope, that’s incorrect. You’ll use your compiler – be it microsoft compiler, mingw-g++ or something else, as long as it is supported by Qt.

Qt provides their own additional preprocessor, called moc. Moc takes input files and based on their contents produce additional *.cpp files which contains standard c++ code. Those files are in turn fed to your “normal” compiler. All necessary build rules are handled automatically, as long as you use qmake to generate project.

Should I implement myself a little library to simply manage native win32 controls or should I go with Qt?

It is your code, and your decision to make. However, to me writing “little library” sounds a lot like reinventing the wheel. If I were you, I’d first tried to make the control work with Qt – because this way I won’t have to reinvent the wheel – there are too many GUI toolkits already, so making another one alone is quite pointless.