During a recent audit of almost every PyQGIS plugin (casually studying repetitive design patterns) and helping some users on <a href="http://gis.stackexhange.com">gis.stackexhange.com</a> [0] I have come across an issue that may affect over 30 plugins (for now, only on Mac).<br>
<br>From what I can gather, William Kyngesburye's Mac builds (and Unix/Linux, too?) consistently use a current, stable version of Qt, now at 4.8, while the OSGEO4W package is at 4.4 [1]. This hasn't been an issue since, I believe (and assume), the bundled Qt in Mac builds included Qt3 support. The most recent 1.7.4 Mac version appears to have a bundled Qt with no Qt3 support (is this correct?).<br>
<br>This has caused many PyQGIS plugins to fail to launch on Mac, due to their use of a Qt3-only QAction signal of activated() in a plugin's initGui() method. Basically, the plugin does not launch (i.e. does nothing), with no error. However, for Windows users, the plugin launches fine, causing problems when trying to offer cross-platform support for plugin issues.<br>
<br>Can someone else verify these findings?<br><br>I am slightly surprised Qt3 is still supported, and think dropping its support sounds like a good idea, especially for QGIS version 1.8 or >, but certainly don't know all the details on versioning for QGIS distributions. I understand this may cause problems with the OSGEO4W package. (btw: Why is it still on Qt 4.4?)<br>
<br>Here are the plugins I have found that use the deprecated activated() signal, including two core C++ [2] and a ZIP archive of the particular files that I found to contain that signal [3]. Without a complete examination of each plugin, I am not entirely certain all of the signals are of QAction. I tried to include only those that appear to be. (Note: there may be more uses of Qt3 deprecated methods, etc.)<br clear="all">
<br>Please correct me if I am off on my assessment of this situation, or if I am late to the discussion.<br><br>[0] <a href="http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/22953/6725">http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/22953/6725</a> , <a href="http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/24860/6725">http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/24860/6725</a><br>
[1] <a href="http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-qt4-libs">http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-qt4-libs</a><br>[2] <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugins_contain-qt3activated.txt">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugins_contain-qt3activated.txt</a><br>
[3] <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugins_contain-qt3activated.zip">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugins_contain-qt3activated.zip</a><br><br>Regards,<br><br>Larry Shaffer<br>Dakota Cartography<br>Black Hills, South Dakota<br>