QT vs OpenGL

[heyrung]

Hi
I am new to graphic programming. I did OpenGL 4 years ago, but didn't get a good grasp on the concept. I will start writing a program for displaying 2D simple geometrical objects (eg rectangular, trapezoid), but not sure which graphic tool I should use for doing this. So far I have 2 choices, - QT and OpenGL that I want to compare.

These are the requirements for the 2D object display software that I will create;

- OS independent (eg can run on both Windows 32 and Unix\Linux)
- Platform independent, eg. can run on any computer. (We have a program made of MFC, turns out, it can't run on some computers)

And other options are the second priority, eg speed, further development....

Could you share your experience on QT and OpenGL with me? just so I can get some information to decide what I should go with. If you have any other graphic tool that you think is good, please let me know too.

By the way, if you have any interesting links on graphic tools, OpenGL, QT, please let me know.

Thanks!

[JohnyDog]

Well, QT and OpenGL serve very different purposes. QT is widget library - if you want to make GUI for you application (menus, buttons, forms etc.), use Qt. OpenGL is more of common interface to hardware accelerated drawing of primitives (lines, triangles ..). If you want accelererated vector visualisation (for example computer game or physical simulation), use OpenGL. However from what you write i think you are seeking vector drawing library, such as cairo (http://cairographics.org/).

So it is not A OR B, you have to use the right library for the right task. For example you may make apllication which will have GUI written in QT, with most of the window covered by area in which you'll render objects using OpenGL. Or with cairo, which itself can use OpenGL as rendering backend.