Re: What is your favorite Lua GUI toolkit?

[Gaspard Bucher <gaspard@...>]

I am using Qt for Lubyk. Integration is done lazily when needs arise (hey, I need TableView, ok, ...) and I am *very* happy to have chosen this framework: it looks nice, supports drawing widgets (labels, buttons, etc) on top of OpenGL (not an easy one), and it is easy to understand and customize.

I staid away from Qt until it moved to LGPL. With the new license, people can invest in both commercial (closed source) and research (open source) projects using the same tools, (lubyk libraries are loaded at runtime anyway, so there is no need to worry about the LGPL issues when creating a static build).

Just a couple of days ago, I realized I needed a good help browser in Lubyk and saw that I can simply use webkit through Qt. This is something that I truly appreciate from a mature library: I am not the first one with need xyz and I can focus on my own work instead of fighting with the limitations of the GUI library.

Gaspard

 

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 11:28 AM, mauro iazzi <mauro.iazzi@gmail.com> wrote:

On 10 February 2011 05:04, Tim Mensch <tim-lua-l@bitgems.com> wrote:
> Strictly speaking, you can use an LGPL library in a commercial product,
> but it places restrictions that some companies are uncomfortable with
> (you must allow reverse engineering and relinking of your application)
> and that are completely verboten on some platforms (like any console or
> handheld video game unit, which pretty universally prohibit any reverse
> engineering in their licenses).

There are a lot of commercial products based on Qt, so the possibility
is not theoretical. None of the platform you cite are targets for Qt
so what does this have to do with the Lua bindings?

> The general consensus (for non-open-source software) is that such an
> LGPLed lib needs to be in a dynamic library so that an end user can
> build their own version and link it in. On platforms like Android or
> iPhone it gets very fuzzy how one could actually comply with LGPL in a
> commercial app, and as such I avoid source tainted by it, but I know
> others feel differently.

Again Android and iPhone are not targets of Qt. If you don't want to
touch the LGPL you surely can, but it allows commercial development,
and not in a purely theoretical way, because several commercial
applications have been created with LGPL dependencies.

In short. If GTK was an option for you, Qt can be because it has the
same license.
Regards,

mauro