Rapid GUI Programming with Python and QT

Write good looking graphical user interface programs that run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, rapidly and easily with PyQT.Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt is the definitive guide to programming PyQt4, the fastest, easiest, and most flexible way to create GUI applications that run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. This book provides a short conversion course for those not yet familiar with Python and then devotes the majority of its pages to PyQt4 programming. All the fundamentals are covered, from the event loop to dialog layout, design, and usage patterns, as well as how to create main windows with menus, toolbars, and dock windows. File handling is also covered, from loading and saving in binary, text, and XML formats, to managing a recently used files list and restoring the user's workspace on start up. The book shows how to create custom widgets whose appearance and behavior are completely determined by the programmer. All of PyQt's major architectures are covered, including Qt's signals and slots mechanism, layouts, low-level event handling, the clipboard, drag and drop, Qt 4.2's new graphics view architecture, and rich text processing. Three chapters are devoted to PyQt4's powerful model/view architecture and more advanced chapters cover internationalization, networking, and multithreading.The first and only book on PyQt 4 provides solid technical coverage of PyQt programming and teaches how to extend PyQt to meet specific needs. It covers both the Python and Qt libraries and shows which to use in which context. Readers will also appreciate the coverage of major technologies introduced with PyQt4, including the new graphics view architecture.