Qt Creator UI Design

[boddison]

I'm totally new to everything to do with mobile development. Having decided to give it a try I've installed Qt Creator and used it to create my first simple application, got it Open Signed Online and tested it on the simulator that is shipped with Qt Creator and on my N97. I'm very pleased that it works just as expected and that I've learned much along the way.

However, it fails in one major respect. The UI does not display on the simulator as it does in design view of QT Creator. It appears slightly better on the N97 but still not corectly. All the labels and button text overflow their enclosing container. It is as if the font used is too big despite manually making the labels and buttons much bigger than that suggested by the Adjust Size function.

Do I need to load a new profile into Embedded Design tab of the Designer options? If so, where can I get this from or what new settings should I use? Or am I missing something else obvious?

[danhicksbyron]

If you want reasonably accurate font representation for Symbian you need to use the epoc "emulator" rather than the simulator. I don't know how far off the simulator is, but I know the Qt Designer (in the old Carbide implementation) was off by pretty much exactly a factor of two: A 12 point font in Designer looks like a 6 pont font on the phone.

[boddison]

If you want reasonably accurate font representation for Symbian you need to use the epoc "emulator" rather than the simulator.

What is the epoc "emulator"? Is that the emulator that ships with the N97 SDK?

Also, out of interest, why does Qt Creator come with Qt Designer when it has what seems to be a perfectly good GUI designer built into it?

[danhicksbyron]

epoc is the emulator that ships with the S60 SDK and is used in the "Carbide C++" development environment -- the older (and somewhat more stable) development environment for Symbian & Qt.

Can't answer your second question.

[boddison]

I know the Qt Designer (in the old Carbide implementation) was off by pretty much exactly a factor of two: A 12 point font in Designer looks like a 6 pont font on the phone.

Thanks. I've created a N97 Device Profile in the Embedded Design option of Qt Creator and it seems that the 'Adjust Size' function now produces relatively sensible results. It is still a bit big on the simulator but I can live with that for the time being.

[boddison]

epoc is the emulator that ships with the S60 SDK and is used in the "Carbide C++" development environment -- the older (and somewhat more stable) development environment for Symbian & Qt.

That makes me wonder if I might be better off using Carbide instead of Qt Creator to learn the basics of mobile development.

[danhicksbyron]

Makes me wonder too.

[TimsonC2000]

Also, out of interest, why does Qt Creator come with Qt Designer when it has what seems to be a perfectly good GUI designer built into it?

In some cases it is better to test user genereated Qt Designer Widget plugins inside the real designer application, but we see the confusion on user side.
So we are discussing the option to hide the Qt Designer away from the normal developer for next releases.