Category: Software

Software I have written.

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Porting a Qt Project to WebAssembly: Challenges and Solutions

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In this post, I describe porting a small application, a calculator called SpeedCrunch, to WebAssembly and some common issues that need to be addressed. I hope you may find some solutions helpful and save time should you want to target the WebAssembly platform with your code.

For those eager to see the result, the application is available here: SpeedCrunch (WebAssembly)

I have also compiled and bundled a new Windows version (with all my changes included): /files/speedcrunch/speedcrunch-0.12.1.zip

Introduction

Porting a Qt application to WebAssembly (WASM) presented some unique challenges. Qt, known for its cross-platform capabilities, initially posed difficulties when targeting WebAssembly, but improved support in later versions smoothed the process. Announced in 2015 and first released in March 2017, WebAssembly was added as an officially supported target to Qt with Qt 5.13.

The application I wanted to port is a small but highly practical calculator called SpeedCrunch. The desktop version was my trusted companion for more than a decade, particularly for work involving binary number manipulation, thanks to its efficient binary digits editor. This feature was invaluable for working with binary representations, a common task in my professional workflow as a CPU architect. Beyond work, I also used the application for various personal calculations.

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A Calculator (4): The Framework

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For as long as I remember, I had played with LEGOs. Those simple blocks would transform into complex objects whose final shapes only existed in the supple thoughts of creative imagination. The kind of LEGO blocks we had while growing up were simple: 2×4, 2×2, 1×8. Anything unusual was rare and precious.

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A Calculator (3): Practical Numerical Methods

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In the last post, we verified and quantified the precision of the basic four functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). Now, we can use them as a stepping stone for more complex functions. We can assume they will be available, so our experimentation could simply use built-in C++ functions.

In this article, the third in a series, we will continue with the proof-of-concept, or pathfinding, research.

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A Calculator

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The idea for this project came about during a week of freezing winter arctic events here in Austin, Texas, with a failed power grid (as well as the Texas government), while keeping close to a gas fireplace, the only source of heat and light, for a couple of days. With a weak internet over a phone data line, I could only do some preliminary searches and mainly work out various details on a writing pad, growing feeling that the project may be personally exciting and practically doable.

It took a long time, but this FPGA Calculator is now finished and I am really happy with how well it turned out.

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Flight Sim Remote Panel / 2

Flight Sim Remote Panel (or its alias name, “XPlaneRemote”) is an application that shows the basic general aviation instrument set on your Android phone or tablet. It is not a flight simulator – a copy of X-Plane 11 should be running on your desktop or a laptop – this application connects to it from an Android device and displays the flight instruments, hence the “remote panel” in its name.

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PlayZX

PlayZX is an Android application that lets you select from thousands of Sinclair ZX Spectrum games and play them through the headphone jack to load them onto your Speccy. You can also select your local (on the device) files, convert them to sound files, and then play them. This way, you can load games for the ZX Spectrum micro and a few other retro computers with a compatible audio jack. 

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