About the BlackAdder IDE
BlackAdder is growing into a rather nice development
environment for Python and PyQt applications. You can use it to
rapidly prototype interfaces, or to develop complete, complex
applications in a very short time.
The central feature of BlackAdder is the
editor, which is specially geared towards working with Python,
and includes folding, syntax highlighing and auto-indent. There
is also a simple but dependable debugger, a Python interpreter
window for when you want to make a quick test, and last, but not
least, an excellent gui designer.
Especially the gui designer is worthy of
serious attention. It is based on Qt Designer, which is a
standard part of the Qt library. It produces designs that can,
at your choice, be transformed into executable Python code or
compilable C++ code. This means that if you prototype your
application in BlackAdder and later, for whatever reason, decide
to move it to C++, you can keep all the interface work you've
done already.
Using Python and PyQt does not force you
to use BlackAdder: you can, if you live in the Unix world, use
the free, GPL, version of Qt, which includes the original Qt
Designer, the free version of PyQt and Python, to create the
same applications. On Windows or OS X, you can use the
non-commercial version of Qt with the free PyQt binaries - these
cannot be used to develop commercial applications, or in a
in-house commercial setting, but are completely identical to the
Unix/X11 GPL library in all other respects.
The GUI design files Qt Designer produces
and those of BlackAdder are completely compatible. Likewise,
using BlackAdder doesn't force you to use PyQt - you can just as
well create a Tkinter application with BlackAdder. You won't
find much use for the Designer module though, since that only knows
about the Qt widgets.
All in all, BlackAdder combines all the
tools you need to develop good GUI apps in an extremely
convenient package, and the added productivity of this system is
well worth the small expense, especially if you intend to
develop commercial applications on Windows.