Qt GUI #521

This pull requests merges in the Qt GUI ( https://github.com/laanwj/bitcoin-qt/blob/master/README.rst ). This introduces a qmake-based build system completely orthogonal to the current build system and UI code. All qt-related source files and resources are added under src/qt: 135 of the 154 "Files Changed" are additions.

Changes to core code have been kept to a minimum and are generally guarded by #ifdef or clearly UI-specific. Outline of changes to core:

• Add InitMessage calls to initialization sequence, for splash screen. These do nothing on Qt or GUI-less builds
• #ifdefs for QT GUI specific changes: there is no default or preferred receiving address, and no visible addresses are generated without the users intervention
• Keep track of maximum block count of peers (GetNumBlocksOfPeers), for visual indication of progress
• Translation functions and printf take std::string instead of char*, to allow _ to safely redirect to Qt translation service
• Add GetUnconfirmedBalance() call to CWallet, to be able to show non-confirmed balance in home screen
• rpc.(cpp|h) renamed to bitcoinrpc.(cpp|h) to satisfy qmake build system on Windows

Discussion on forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44330.msg532087 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15276.0

ACK on the changes to core. I haven't reviewed the UI code itself.

This seems to break the wxgui (error in AppInit()). Either that should be fixed or wxgui removed IMHO.

Didn't notice it yet. I'll fix that. The changes should not affect the wx GUI.

tcatm: I'm unable to reproduce this (on Linux). The Wx still works as it did before. Can you get a traceback for the error?

sorry, my fault: I forgot to run make clean and thus part of bitcoin was usind bdb 4.7 and bdb 4.8

ACK, I did a quick review and setup a qt build environment. Looks good.

I'm assuming no one cares about adding non mit pictures to bitcoin, but I might as well bring up the issue.

Also, it might just be me but I really hate having two sets of translations, is it not possible to redefine some translation functions and make a script to convert the format of the files?

This is exactly what I did (see scripts/qt/extract_strings_qt.py). When running with Qt UI, the _ function is redirected to Qt. The Wx translations are not used by the Qt UI.

Feel free to add or replace your own images if you think that's a concern...

Well look at me not paying attention, but I also meant for qt files to use _ so that translation programs will pick up strings from qtui as well (or did you do that too, im on my phone and the browser lags out if I try to load the diff tab). Also I'm assuming you have some strings specific to qtui already, how were those handled in the existing translations for qt?

In URI handling, why does it not parse the message field?

Nothing special has to be done for that; Qt uses tr() instead of _, and recognizes the qtui-specific strings (which are indeed a lot) in lupdate/lrelease, the qt translation tools, automatically.

It does not pick up _(), that's why the python script exists. It converts the strings in _() to QT_TRANSLATE_NOOP strings which are recognized.

This means that qt translator can be used to translate the strings in the core as well as the qtui-specific strings in one go.

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:26 PM, Matt Corallo < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

Well look at me not paying attention, but I also meant for qt files to use _ so that translation programs will pick up strings from qtui as well (or did you do that too, im on my phone and the browser lags out if I try to load the diff tab). Also I'm assuming you have some strings specific to qtui already, how were those handled in the existing translations for qt?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #521 (comment)

Huh I don't see anything about a message field in the URL handling? What's it supposed to parse, and do with it?

re:images I dont have a problem with it but I thought id bring it up to make sure no one else had any problems with it. Re:translations, it just bugs me that half the translations are in po format and the other half are in qt. That might cause issues later on if there are conflicting translations used by bitcoind. My question was whether or not it would be possible to modify the qt-generated code to use the_() function (which is mapped to tr) so that translation software would pick up the strings that qt needs as well as wx and bitcoind ones. That way all the translations would be in one place.

See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/URI_Scheme (ignore lukes tonal exponent crap)

Eventually all the translations should be in qt format (ts), not the other way around, IMO. The Qt translation system is more advanced (context sensitive, can take into account multiples, shows the GUI while translating etc).

The po files could be generated from the ts files, for use by bitcoind, and wouldn't even need to be in git. This would need another script but not a very complex one.

What would you want to do with the message? Display it in a popup? Currently, the "send coins" tab is opened and the amount, address and label is simply added to the recipients list when a URL is drag&dropped into the client.

BTW bitcoind doesn't use translation at all; I guess it'd need to link against libgettext to do that. Currently, without ui, _ is implemented as this (util.h):

#if !defined(QT_GUI) && !defined(GUI)
inline const char* _(const char* psz)
{
    return psz;
}
#endif

If this is kept the same, this means the po files can simply be removed when the wx UI goes away.

RE: message in bitcoin uri

It should be stored as a comment for that transaction. Actually, I'd like to have a editable comment field for every transaction (outgoing and incoming) so one could label individual transactions on a single address. I think the wallet and RPC already supports comments.

Is that true? I haven't noticed it. I intended to add such functionality. A long time ago I sent a message on the mailing list about adding metadata to transactions and address book addresses, but no one ever replied, so I guessed it was not practical or useless.

Anyway, we can add this later. It's a good idea in any case.

laanwj: Just a side note: I've written a python script that reads ts files and outputs unicode string tables for use in mac or iphone applications. I think it won't take me long to modify it so it outputs po files.

p2k: nice, if we decide to add gettext-based translation to bitcoind that will certainly come in handy

Meh, I dont care if all the translations are po or qt, but I would think it would be better to have them all together instead of split between two files.

As I said, unless gettext-based translation is added to bitcoind, we can simply remove the .po files when the wx UI is deprecated. That would solve the problem wouldn't it?

yes., long as existing translations are ported over.

Yes, that could be done, though that'd only work for the strings in the bitcoin core. Most of the strings in the UI itself would remain untranslated as they're different from before.