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# Welcome to the Qt 4.0 Beta 1

We are pleased to present our first beta release for Qt 4. We are releasing this code to our users because we want you to have the opportunity to give us your feedback before the Qt 4.0 API is completely frozen. The feedback we receive will help us to ensure that the final Qt 4.0 release provides as much value and productivity as possible.

This beta release is not meant to be used in production code. However, you can already start using it for new projects. The API might change before Qt 4.0 final is released, but only in minor ways. Your can also start porting your Qt 3 based projects over to Qt 4. The Porting Guide and the qt3to4 porting tool will help you with the process.

We suggest that you write new small programs to experience what the next generation of Qt programming will be like. In particular, there are five new technologies that we hope you will try out and give us feedback on. All are new to Qt, written specifically for Qt 4:

- Tulip, a new set of template container classes.
- Interview, a model/view architecture for item views.
- Arthur, the Qt 4 painting framework.
- Scribe, the Unicode text renderer with a public API for performing low-level text layout.
- Mainwindow, a modern action-based mainwindow, toolbar, menu, and docking architecture.

This beta release also previews the new Qt Designer user interface design tool. The tool is still heavily under development, but you can already try it out and give us feedback. See the Qt Designer overview to get started.

In addition, the following modules have been significantly improved since Qt 3:

- A fully cross-platform accessibility module, with support for the emerging SP-API Unix standard in addition to Microsoft and Mac Accessibility.
- The SQL module, which is now based on the Interview model/view framework.
- The network module, with better support for UDP and synchronous sockets.
- The style API, which is now decoupled from the widgets, meaning that you can draw any user interface element on any device (widget, pixmap, etc.).
- Enhanced thread support, with signal-slot connections across threads and per-thread event loops.

See also Getting Started with Qt 4 for an overview of the main portability issues.

## Supported Platforms

For this beta release, we have tested the entire range of platforms targeted by the final Qt 4.0 release, with three exceptions: Windows with Borland C++, HP-UX i, and HP-UX with aCC 1.x.

While testing, we found out that we needed to install patches on some of the compilers. If you run into problems when compiling, make sure to get the most recent upgrades from your compiler vendor.

## How to Provide Feedback

Trolltech has set up a special mailing list, `qt4-preview-feedback`, for discussion of issues relating to the Qt 4 beta releases. To subscribe, send a message containing just the word subscribe to qt4-preview-feedback-request@trolltech.com. We encourage you to use this mailing list instead of `qt-interest` for Qt 4 specific issues. See http://lists.trolltech.com/ for more information on Trolltech's mailing lists, including archived discussions.

If you think you have found an actual bug in Qt, we would like to hear about it so that we can fix it. In that case, please send the bug report to qt-bugs@trolltech.com. Be aware that we cannot guarantee a personal reply for all bug reports.

Before reporting a bug, please check the Known Issues page on our web site to see if the issue is already known.

Always include the following information in your bug report:

1. The name and version number of your compiler
2. The name and version number of your operating system
3. The version of Qt you are using, and what configure options it was compiled with.

If the problem you are reporting is only visible at run-time, try to create a small test program that shows the problem when run. Often, such a program can be created with some minor changes to one of the many example programs in Qt's `examples` directory.

If you are a licensed customer, be aware that we cannot provide technical support for beta releases. Use the `qt4-preview-feedback` mailing list for questions related to the Qt 4 beta.

## Roadmap

We expect to release the final Qt 4.0 in late Q1, 2005.

We hope you will have as much fun and pleasure experimenting with Qt 4 as we had designing and building it.

--The Trolltech Qt 4 Team