Qt-GUI

The official interface for Licq is written in Qt. It comes along with the main distribution and includes all the features of Licq as they are listed in LicqFeatures. See the qt-gui/doc directory for more information.

Includes full KDE support as well if configured with "--with-kde".

Screenshots are available on LicqScreenshots.

Qt4-GUI

Qt4 has been released and with it a lot of new functionality. To take advantage of this, the Qt-GUI is being ported to use the Qt4 API. This means large code changes which also gives us a chance to clean up and reorganize the code.

One main benefit of Qt4 is that it has many functions for integrating with different desktops. This includes tray icon handling which works on any desktop with a standard tray area. It also allows us to let dialog buttons have different placements to match the desktop it is running in. We've also heard that it works on Mac OS X.

We have also done some other improvements that are not directly related to Qt4:

  • Options dialog has been rewritten to have a navigation-tree pane and fewer options per page;
  • Message dialog has been updated to use less space for controls;
  • Tabbed message dialog has been updated to remember its position/size;
  • History dialog has been updated and rewritten, with much better search functionality.
  • Various new options added to make the GUI even more configurable.

The following are the things that are yet to be done and known issues:

  • When compiling with KDE support and running with oxygen style (default in KDE4), menus have no text.
  • Contact list is CPU heavy, this is mostly seen when going online and a lot of contacts are animated at the same time;
  • Translations need to be updated.
  • Some glitches in the main contact list, e.g. empty entries being added sometimes.

As the Qt4-GUI is still under development it will not yet replace the old Qt-GUI as the standard GUI for Licq. However, it is fully functional so if you feel like trying it out, just keep reading.

Building

You will need the following to build and run Qt4-GUI:

  • A subversion client
  • cmake (ver >= 2.4.2)
  • Qt4 (ver >= 4.3.0), including header files.
  • Everything needed to build Licq and the old GUI.

1. Get the latest Licq from svn as there has been some changes since 1.3.4 that Qt4-GUI depends upon. 

svn checkout http://svn.licq.org/svn/trunk/licq

2. Build and install Licq.
Go to licq directory and type the following. 

make -f Makefile.cvs
./configure
make
make install

3. If you use any other plugins such as msn or console you will need to recompile them as well.
For each plugin, goto the plugin directory and repeat the same commands as for Licq above.

4. Get the Qt4-GUI from svn. 

svn checkout http://svn.licq.org/svn/trunk/qt4-gui

5. Compile Qt4-GUI.
Go to qt4-gui directory and type the following: 

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

You can adjust the install path by specifying the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable during Makefile generation. For example: 

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/licq ..

6. Start licq with Qt4-GUI.
Unless you specified another install prefix for licq, it was installed in /usr/local. 

/usr/local/bin/licq -p qt4-gui

You can also start licq as normal with the old gui and then activate the Qt4-GUI from the Plugin Manager.
Running both Qt-GUI and Qt4-GUI at the same time seems to work fine but note that they will share the same configuration file.

If you have any problems, comments or suggestions, the easiest way to reach us is on IRC.