[PyQt] Designer source

[Henning Schröder]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Hans-Peter Jansen <hpj at urpla.net> wrote:
>
> Am Thursday 08 March 2012 23:08:09 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> > On 08.03.12 19:42:39, Detlev Offenbach wrote:
> > > Am Donnerstag, 8. März 2012, 09:49:41 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> > > > On 08.03.12 09:35:51, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > > > > On 07.03.12 16:14:18, JPolk wrote:
> > > > > > ...'cause it would make it easier for me to merge Designer with
> > > > > > Maya ;-)>
> > > > >
> > > > > Write Maya in C++ ;P
> > > >
> > > > Hmm, on a more serious note, you won't get around writing C++. AFAIK
> > > > the public API of the QtDesigner library (and hence also the PyQt
> > > > module) does not include the necessary functions to actually create a
> > > > designer yourself. One needs to use one or two private headers from
> > > > QtDesigner for the necessary functions. You could of course simply wrap
> > > > that private API in a simple class and expose that via sip to Python
> > > > and then do all the rest in Python.
> > >
> > > If somebody would do that and maintain it over time I would be the first
> > > to use to integrate Designer into the eric IDE.
> >
> > Its not an easy task though, we had something somewhat-working for
> > KDevelop4 in a plugin, but it did require some nasty hacks and
> > workarounds the designer API. Its simply not really meant to be added to
> > "arbitrary" IDE's, but mainly geared towards the designer standalone
> > app.
> >
> > Note, I'm basing that information on Qt4.5/4.6, i.e. a point in time
> > where QtCreator was still in its early stages. Maybe in more recent
> > Qt versions this got improved to provide better integration for
> > QtCreator.
>
> My humble guess is: it's easier to create a module, that resembles the main
> designer functionality, than wrapping that biest, given, that a lot of the
> necessary hacks are done to work around the inflexibility of C++ for that
> purpose. Some deficits in the process of designing and modifying UIs with
> designer could be accounted to this fact, too. The price redoing it would be
> loosing the existing designer plug ins.
>
> OTOH, done right, this would allow for user customizable UIs, e.g. Camelot
> could create standard database layouts, which are *easily* *adjustable* to
> everyones needs.
>
> A well done PyQt property editor would be a great addition the project on its
> own.
>

There is a Python IDE project which integrates Qt-Designer. It is
called Pynoto (http://code.google.com/p/pynoto/)
The current version is coded in C++ but I have still a copy of the old
pure Python version and ripped of the Designer integration. It uses
the same private header file like QtCreator.
So it is possible.
If anyone is interested I could post my fork.

Regards
Henning