PerlQt is an incomplete but well-thought-out object-oriented interface
to the C++ GUI development library, Qt.

This release, PerlQt 0.03, is distributed under the LGPL and requires
Qt-1.1 and Perl 5.004 (or a beta version). I have only successfully
compiled PerlQt myself on my own RedHat Linux 4.0 system with a 2.0.28
kernel, running Perl-5.00390, which is a beta-release of Perl-5.004.

Important note: Your Perl-5.004 (or beta release) must *not* be
binary-compatible with Perl-5.003. If it is, there will be namespace
clashes between Perl and Qt and all hell will break loose. This means
that most of you who downloaded binary Perl-5.004 releases must
recompile to get PerlQt working. Sorry.

PerlQt has poor documentation: A few pages of pod documentation just
stating if a method has been interfaced, and description of what few
changes were needed in the interface. But all of the Qt documentation
is just as valid with PerlQt as it is with C++ Qt.

PerlQt is easy to learn if you know Perl and Qt, because the interface
is the same as C++ Qt, and it makes the minimum number of changes mandated
by Perl.

PerlQt dramatically cuts down on development time and complexity because
of the Perl part! PerlQt does not require moc or headers or compiliation.
In exchange, it has a startup penalty of a few seconds.

PerlQt is fully object-oriented. All widgets and dialogs are Perl objects,
and, using inheritance, creation of new widgets is easy and natural.

PerlQt's interface to signals and slots allows signals and slots from
Perl and C++ to be connected to signals and slots in Perl and C++.

PerlQt is very fast because it is such a direct interface between Perl
and Qt. It does no translation of the interface from Qt, because the
interface is so elegant, well-designed, and easily converted to Perl.

PerlQt is copyright Ashley Winters <jql@accessone.com> and is distributed
under the terms of the LGPL and is subject to (as well as compliant with)
the Qt licensing regulations. AFAIK, PerlQt programs are subject to the Qt
license just as much as a C++ Qt program; although I think the Qt license
needs to be much more explicit about Qt clones and language interfaces.

PerlQt is available for free, and may be downloaded from any CPAN mirror
in the authors/Ashley_Winters/ directory as the file Qt-0.03.tar.gz.

Going to http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ will forward you to a CPAN mirror
which is close to you.

Qt is available for download from http://www.troll.no/dl/ or via
anonymous ftp to ftp.troll.no. See README.QT for information about
Qt and details about downloading Qt and licensing restrictions.

There is no specific discussion area for PerlQt, nor do I forsee one. If
you find a bug in the software, contact me, Ashley Winters, directly via
e-mail at jql@accessone.com. Any questions regarding Qt should be directed
towards the left hemisphere of your brain, which should cause you to begin
searching the Qt homepage which is at http://www.troll.no/ or the Qt
documentation in the html/ dir of wherever Qt was installed on your
computer. You did install Qt already, didn't you?

Should those measures fail, send a message to qt-interest@troll.no,
which is a mailing-list (send a message with "subscribe" in the body to
qt-interest-request@troll.no to subscribe), and I, as well as many other
knowledgeable people including the Qt authors, will try to respond to
your message.

Legal obligations require me to note that PerlQt requires the Qt library,
which is copyright Troll Tech AS. Freely distributable programs may
generally use Qt for free, see README.QT for details.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Library General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.