Embedd an external application in a widget under Qt

Question

I was wondering either it is possible to run an external application inside a QT widget under windows operating system. For example, if I were to write a Qt gui application, where in one of the dialogs user could write some text, I could use a textbox there or something similar. But instead, would it be possible to run Notepad++ or windows notepad application in that dialog? I would appreciate all help.

Answer 1

It is not really practical to do what you describe at the application level, embedding an entire process into a window of another. (It would be technically difficult and the user experience would likely be pretty bad if you could pull it off.)

Fortunately, this very problem of application components has already been solved! So it is possible to get the end result you describe via a slightly different mechanism. Many applications expose COM interfaces for automation and embedding, and it is possible to embed COM objects within a Qt application.

(Older technologies such as DDE, OLE and ActiveX provided various aspects of this but are all basically deprecated in favour of COM AFAIK.)

Hopefully you can find a COM object from a third party, or find an app that exposes its components via COM and assemble your app that way.

Have a look at the Qt documentation:

• Active Qt - ActiveX and COM support for Qt