What's New in Qt 5.9

• Added the qfloat16 f and qfloat16 &f overload functions to the QDataStream class for writing a floating point number to the stream and reading it from the stream.

• Made the QProcessEnvironment class available on iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and VxWorks.

• QRegularExpression now requires the PCRE2 library version 10.20, or later. Support for the PCRE1 library was dropped. A copy of PCRE2 is shipped with Qt and will automatically be used on the platforms that lack it.

• Added the QOperatingSystemVersion class to provide convenient access to the operating system and version.

• Made the QPainter class' GL engine functional with core profile OpenGL contexts.

• Added the QImage::reinterpretAsFormat() function to change the image format without changing the data.

• Added support for compute shaders in QOpenGLShader::ShaderType and QOpenGLShaderProgram also with OpenGL ES 3.1 and newer.

• Enabled stem-darkening and gamma-correction on OpenType fonts on platforms that use FreeType, if supported.

Added the following QML properties:

• CameraCapture.supportedResolutions

• CameraFlash.supportedModes

• MediaPlayer.notifyInterval (also for the Audio and Video types)

• Video.loops

• Added the QNetworkAccessManager::addStrictTransportSecurityHosts() function to support HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) policies.

• Added the QNetworkAccessManager::redirectPolicy() function and the QNetworkRequest::RedirectPolicy enumeration to determine whether the Network Access API should automatically follow a HTTP redirect response.

• Added support for ahead-of-time generation of QML type caches.

• Enabled caching OpenGL shader program binaries used by the Qt GUI module (QPainter's GL paint engine) and the Qt Quick scenegraph on disk to improve application-startup and view-initialization times.

• Added an OpenVG backend for Qt Quick.

• Enabled making window-screen associations directly from QML by using Window.screen and Qt.application.screens. This enables creating multi-screen aware applications for desktop and embedded without involving C++ code.

• Added a way to query information about the font actually used to render a Text type.

• Added an image provider that can share decoded image data and memory between processes.

• Introduced new QML types: DelayButton, ScrollView.

• Added multi-touch support.

• Made the ComboBox type editable.

• Added the interactive property for making a Drawer type non-interactive and persistent.

• Enabled live value updates (by default) for the Slider, RangeSlider, and Dial types.

• Added dedicated notification signals for user interaction: AbstractButton::toggled(), Slider::moved(), SpinBox::valueModified(), and so on.

• Enabled incremental discrete scrolling with the ScrollBar type.

• Added enabling and disabling the swipe for the SwipeDelegate type. In addition, the swipe can now be opened programmatically.

• Added support for the vertical orientation to the SwipeView.orientation property.

• Added rendering Qt Quick 2 scenes to a texture and interacting with them within a 3D world.

• Added a Technical Preview of a new animation subsystem that enables non-blocking, keyframe animations on the threadpool and exporting from animations from Blender.

• Added Physics Based Rendering (PBR) material (QMetalRoughMaterial and QTexturedMetalRoughMaterial) to Qt3DExtras for improved appearance when used with environment maps.

• Added 3D text support to Qt3DExtras.

• Added the LevelOfDetail type to control the representation of an entity based on distance from the observer or size on the screen. It comes with a convenience loader class that loads different QML files.

• Made the Mesh type plugin based. It comes with plugins for the Wavefront OBJ, PLY and FBX formats and makes it easy to add other formats.

• Added distance field based 2D textured text that can be freely rotated but is based on planar geometry.

• Added Classic Bluetooth support for WinRT.

• Added Bluetooth LE Peripheral support for Android.

• Added support for minor grid lines for logarithmic axes.

• Added options for legend marker shapes to QLegend::MarkerShape.

• Added support for adding more than one bar series to a chart.

• Added support for rotating and tilting maps.

• Added touch gestures for rotating and tilting maps.

• Improved support for stacking multiple Map types.

• Added the MapCopyrightNotice type to flexibly position the copyrights of multiple map elements on top.

• Enabled styling the HTML copyright using CSS.

• Added support for handing the rendering of map items to the plugin.

• Added the MapboxGL plugin that is based on the mapbox-gl-native mapping engine.

• Added the Map::fitViewportToVisibleMapItems() method to only consider visible items when fitting the viewport.

• Added the MapItemGroup type to combine multiple map items in a separate QML file.

• Added the Map.fieldOfView property to control the camera's field of view when the map is tilted.

• Added the MapParameter type to expose and control plugin-specific runtime functionality.

• Enabled using NFC when running as an Android service.

• Added support for communicating with ISO-DEP, NFC-A, NFC-B, NFC-F, and NFC-V tags or smartcards, such as the German eID card, using QNearFieldTarget::sendCommand() on Android.

• Added the CAN FD Bitrate Switch (BRS) and Error State Indicator (ESI) flags to QCanBusFrame (QCanBusFrame::hasBitrateSwitch() and QCanBusFrame::hasErrorStateIndicator()).

• Added QCanBusDeviceInfo for information about available CAN interfaces.

• Added a plugin to support SYS-TEC electronic CAN adapters on Windows.

• Added support for selection handles for the dedicated (desktop) keyboard.

• Changed the behavior of the shift handler to only activate caps lock if the shift key is double-clicked.

• Added support for external keyboard layouts, which allows overriding and exclusion of the built-in keyboard layouts.

• Added a language selection popup for faster selection of the input language.

• Added support for the automatic selection of the only remaining word in the suggestion list.

• Made the word candidate list automatically hidden when inactive.

• Added full screen input mode.

• Based on Chromium 56.

• Switched internally to the new Chromium build-system GN.

• Added loading with HTTP POST.

• Added support for user scripts with QQuickWebEngineProfiles and for using QQuickWebEngineUserScripts from C++.

• DownloadItems now get a reason when they are interrupted or fail.

• Added support for handling external QTcpSocket objects.

• Added experimental DRM dumb buffer support to the linuxfb platform plugin, to help devices that do not support the deprecated fbdev model (or have problems with fbdev emulation).

• Added support for filtering and prediction of touch events to the evdevtouch plugin.