Qt3GUISupport (out of date)

Initially, qucs was a Qt3 application. Qt4 introduced API changes in some areas. To help porting the application, there is an official tool called qt3to4 tool [http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qt3to4.html]. This tool facilitates the Qt3Support library (which is part of Qt4). The Qt3Support library will not be part of Qt5 (which is the latest Qt version) - therefore manual work is needed to replace Qt3Support by newer classes [http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/porting4.html].

This manual work has been ongoing since ~end of 2012 and is mostly complete. There are some leftovers; e.g. Q3VBoxLayouts which need to be ported manually (typically, a QWidget with a QVBoxLayout is created instead), and some other classes from the Qt3Support module.

The porting can be done in a very localized manner (typically, replace classes and adapt some methods calls) - no "big" changes across several modules / files have to be made!

Typically, changing from Qt3Support to newer classes does not cause big optical changes - mostly cosmetic changes are made (e.g. nicer spacings of elements, more intuitive flows in dialogs...). Filedialogs have a, more modern look & feel.

One big issue is the widespread use of the Qt3Support class Q3PtrList (see separate item in the main table).

Mid-term goal is the removal of the Qt3Support requirement - This will allows Qucs to run under Qt5!