This book fills a void between the many syntax-oriented programming texts that teach readers how to program in C++ with standard I/O (e.g., Deitel) and the relatively few books that assume a knowledge of OOP/C++ and emphasize GUI programming using higher-level frameworks (e.g., Blanchette). There are plenty of books on C++ programming but, with few exceptions, the user interface is constrained to either primitive terminal I/O, or closed-source, non-portable libraries (e.g., Microsoft Foundation Classes). This book makes extensive use of Nokia’s excellent Qt system.Originally developed by Trolltech, "Qt is a cross-platform C++ application framework developers can use to write single-source applications that run natively on Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and embedded Linux. Qt has been used to build thousands of successful commercial applications worldwide, and is the basis of the open source KDE desktop environment." Most Linux distributions include a non-commercial version of Qt. In addition Qt is the basis for the standard Linux desktop, KDE and is used by more than an estimated 150,000 open source developers worldwide. - Publisher.