The cross-platform programming

Qt is an application-programming framework that is used to develop cross-platform applications. What this means is that software written for one platform can be ported and executed on another platform with little or no effort. This is obtained by limiting the application source code to a set of calls to routines and libraries available to all the supported platforms, and by delegating all tasks that may differ between platforms (such as drawing on the screen and accessing system data or hardware) to Qt. This effectively creates a layered environment (as shown in the following diagram), where Qt hides all platform-dependent aspects from the application code:

Of course, at times, we need to use some functionality that Qt doesn't provide. In such situations, it is important to use a conditional compilation for platform-specific code. Qt provides a wide set of macros specifying the current platform. We will return to this topic in Chapter 6, Qt Core Essentials.

Supported platforms

The framework is available for a number of platforms, ranging from classical desktop environments through embedded systems to mobile devices. Qt 5.9 supports the following platforms:

• Desktop platforms: Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Mobile platforms: UWP, Android, and iOS
• Embedded platforms: VxWorks, INTEGRITY, QNX, and Embedded Linux

It is likely that the list of supported platforms will change in future Qt versions. You should refer to the Supported Platforms documentation page for your Qt version for detailed information about supported versions of operating systems and compilers.

GUI scalability

For the most part of the history of desktop application development, specifying sizes of GUI elements in pixels was the common practice. While most operating systems had dots per inch (DPI) settings and APIs for taking it into account for a long time, the majority of existing displays had approximately the same DPI, so applications without high DPI support were common.

The situation changed when high-DPI displays became more common in the market—most notably in mobile phones and tablets, but also in laptops and desktops. Now, even if you only target desktop platforms, you should think about supporting different DPI settings. When you target mobile devices, this becomes mandatory.

If you are using Qt Widgets or Qt Quick, you often don't need to specify pixel sizes at all. Standard widgets and controls will use fonts, margins, and offsets defined by the style. If layouts are used, Qt will determine positions and sizes of all GUI items automatically. Avoid specifying constant sizes for GUI elements when possible. You may use sizes related to sizes of other GUI elements, the window, or the screen. Qt also provides an API for querying screen DPI, GUI style metrics, and font metrics, which should help to determine the optimal size for the current device.

On macOS and iOS, Qt Widgets and Qt Quick applications are scaled automatically using a virtual coordinate system. Pixel values in the application remain the same, but the GUI will scale according to the DPI of the current display. For example, if the pixel ratio is set to 2 (a common value for retina displays), creating a widget with 100 "pixels" width will produce a widget with 200 physical pixels. That means that the application doesn't have to be highly aware of DPI variations. However, this scaling does not apply to OpenGL, which always uses physical pixels.