Qt

Qt is a cross-platform application development framework by Nokia. It is great for graphically-enabled applications that need to be deployed on multiple operating systems in different environments with little to no intrinsic change.

Qt is great for applications such as IsItPrime and other NCPrime projects because it is simple, straightforward, and allows for the look and feel to stay more or less the same on different OSs. Currently, IsItPrime for OS X and Windows not only look different, but actually are different.

With the creation of a Qt codebase, this will change. Soon, IsItPrime will be consistent on many different platforms, including (eventually) Linux.

The Windows version of IsItPrime Qt (2.0.0) has been re-written from the ground up to use absolutely no Windows-specific code - that is, it no longer uses the Win32 API whatsoever.

This is both a good thing and a bit of a hurdle. Qt luckily includes functionality identical or at least similar to what can be done with the Windows API. If it doesn't, there is usually a workaround for emulation.

The OS X version, while it may still be Qt-enabled, will also include several OS X-specific features like Twitter and Facebook integration, as that exists with OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2) and above. For backwards compatibility, a version will be released with different workarounds for these features (or with them removed).

Linux will be tricky as I do not currently have a Linux machine for testing. That will likely also change. Be sure to keep up on our blog for more updates regarding Qt!