For whom is this book
intended
This is the first book on Python and Qt.
There have been quite a few books on C++ and Qt, but you would
need to be fairly adept at mentally searching and replacing
C++ language constructs to be able to use those books for
pleasure and profit if your chosen language is Python. The
same holds for the extensive html documentation that comes
with the C++ Qt library.
With the growing popularity of Python,
PyQt and BlackAdder, people will start using these tools who
don't want to translate C++ to Python to figure out what they
are supposed to do.
This is the first group of people for
whom I've written this book: beginning software developers who
have chosen Python because it allows them to become productive
quickly with a language and an environment that have been
designed to accommodate ‘subject specialists'. That is, people
who need to get an application done to help them with their
work, but who are not developers by profession.
Then there are the experienced
developers, people who have been coding in Visual Basic,
Delphi or Java, and who, like the first group, now need
something a lot more productive and portable. They will be
able to grasp the concepts quickly, but may find a lot of use
in the advanced code examples and the in-depth discussion of
issues particular to PyQt.
Another group of possible readers
consists of C++ developers who have turned to Python as a
rapid prototyping language. Prototyping with the same GUI
library they will use for their final C++ application will
give them a definite advantage, as most of the prototype code
will remain useful.
Finally there are people who are more
experienced in Python than I am, but who want to get
acquainted with one of the best-designed GUI toolkits
available for the language—there is a lot of interesting
content to be found in this book for them, too.
My aim in writing this book was to
create a genuine vademecum for Python, PyQt and GUI
programming. If you keep referring to this book a year after
you've acquired it, if you can find the answer to most of your
daily and quite a few of your exceptional problems, and if you
tend to keep this book in the vicinity of your desk, then I
will have succeeded.