Black Adder and PyQt

[Wayne Pierce]

Ron Stephens wrote:
> I am thinking of buying a "home" license of Black Adder, to use for
> making GUI's for Python programs to be used on Linux+KDE and also
> perhaps for the new Sharp Zaurus. Does anyone have any experience with
> Black Adder that they can share? One of my main reasons for wanting
> Black Adder is to use the GUI builder, so I am particualrly interested
> in opinions about that aspect of Black Adder, but I am also interested
> in other aspects as well.

I really like the GUI builder of BA, unfortunately I think it could use 
more work.  Granted it is __still__ in beta, but it's been in beta for 
quite a while without an update.  When I do GUI development I typically 
do the first part in BA, then manually add in the GUI pieces that BA 
doesn't support directly yet (like menus).

The only thing I don't like about the GUI builder is that it doesn't 
support a lot of widgets yet.  The last I heard they were waiting for Qt3.

> One question I have concerns licensing. If I buy the "home" version,
> could I still share my programs as GPL'ed open source, or would that
> require me to buy the "professional" license, which is much more
> expensive? In other words, my programs would never be used in any
> commercial way but I might want to post them as open source, free 
> software.

As I understand it, the only restriction on redistribution is if you are 
distributing commercial apps.  Then you need the business edition to 
redistribute Qt and the other modules.  It might be good to get the 
scoop directly from them on this since I got the business edition and 
haven't had to worry about it.

> I know Black Adder is still in beta, but is it stable enoough to use
> already? I suppose I should ask how it compares to PythonWare amd
> WingIDE, but I kind of favor the PyQt toolkit becuase it will
> hopefully work well on the Sharp Zaurus as well as the KDE desktopI haven't had too many problems with BA's stability; typically I use BA 
for the GUI design and syntax highlighting then compile and test in a 
shell.  I've had some lockups when using the run from within BA in the 
past, not all the time but I was never able to figure out what would 
cause it so I just skipped it all together.

The documentation could use some work, most of the PyQT docs are in C++ 
and can take some fiddeling to get right.  At one point I started to do 
some documentation for BA to give to some coworkers, if I can find it 
you are welcome to it (they decided to stick with Perl, so I never had 
to finish it).

They have a mailing list (somewhere) for BA discussions, I forgot what 
the address is and had it sent to an address I no longer have access to. 
:(  If you do purchase BA, I would say skip the support and the option 
to receive CDs.  In the time that I have had the program there hasn't 
been an update, the support is so-so and they haven't ever sent a CD.

Even with all of that BA is usually the second program I open when I do 
Python development (the shell is first).  The feature I like most is the 
ability to collapse code blocks.

Wayne
-- 
Wayne Pierce
web: http://www.mishre.com
email: wayne at mishre.com

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