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About PyQt

PyQt is Python bindings developed by Riverbank Computing Limited for the Qt cross-platform GUI/XML/SQL C++ framework. Qt itself is developed by Nokia's Qt Development Frameworks (formerly Trolltech). PyQt provides bindings for Qt 2 and Qt 3. PyQt4, a separate set of bindings, covers the Qt 4 series of releases. PyQt is distributed under a choice of licences: GPL version 2, GPL version 3, or a commercial license. There are also official bindings from Nokia called PySide available under LGPL.

PyQt4 is a set of Python bindings for Qt 4 that exposes much of the functionality of Qt 4 to Python. It contains over 600 classes that cover graphical user interfaces, XML handling, network communication, SQL databases, Web browsing and other technologies in Qt.

Many of the features are described on the (currently archived) About PyQt4 page on the PyQt Wiki.

PyQt documentation

Current documentation is available at http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/static/Docs/PyQt4/html/.

The PyQt Wiki contains more actively-updated information and examples:

On this Wiki, you can find the following tutorials:

PyQt applications

A list of applications that use PyQt as their UI layer can be found on the SomeExistingApplications page of the PyQt Wiki. This replaces the list previously found here.

Similarly, the Third_Party_Packages_and_Modules page provides a list of resources that can be used to help build applications with certain features.

A Wiki dedicated to PyQt and PyKDE can be found at The PyQt and PyKDE community Wiki. The http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/mailman/listinfo/pyqt is low in volume and high in quality. The Roadmap is always valuable to read.

Phil Thompson was interviewed about PyQt for KDE Dot News in August 2006, and profiled for SunWorld Online in 2000.

Earlier Versions

This section describes PyQt version 3 (for Qt 3).

PyQt implements around 300 classes and over 5,750 functions and methods including:

Earlier versions of PyQt included a graphical debugger called eric, written using PyQt, which can be used to debug PyQt and ordinary Python console applications. It's now available separately as eric4 from http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/index.html.

PyQt includes pyuic which generates Python code from GUI designs created with Qt Designer. This makes PyQt very useful as a rapid prototyping tool for applications that will eventually be (partly or completely) implemented in C++ because the user interface designs can be re-used without modification.

PyQt is available for Windows, UNIX/Linux, Mac OS X and the Sharp Zaurus.


CategoryPyGUI

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