For those who don't know, Qt 4 is offered in two(+) variations. A GPL'd version that requires you release the final application under the GPL as well and a paid development kit that lets you do whatever you like. Part of the license requires that if you use the free tools anywhere in the development process then you need to release GPL'd. So you can't use the free tools and then use the paid-for version in the final release. Since the paid-for version is definitely not cheap, unless you can be certain you're releasing under the GPL, then Qt becomes a difficult choice.
Okay, I think I've found it. I've been looking for a cross-platform development solution for a while now and I used to use Qt, although I never actually got around to building it on anything other the Linux. But now that I've started working full-time, I needed to find something where I didn't have to worry about the licensing.
My first instinct was Java, as I wanted something with a fairly quick turnaround. But I just didn't like how it looked on Linux and I basically got confused with all the talk of AWT or Swing or whatever the current flavour is.
So, I turned to wxWidgets, a cross-platform library that I had looked at years ago, but never really liked. However, I really wanted a faster application turn-around time than C can provide as what I'm building are really just small utilities and so I added Python into the mix and started learning both a toolkit and a language at once wxPython.
The first tool, a PLC code generator, is coming along nicely and has had a quite quick development cycle. Especially since I am learning both a language and tool-kit in one hit. My final evaluation is that wxPython is truly a powerful tool and my only disappointment is the difficulty I'm experiencing in finding really good documentation with example code. If anyone can point me in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.
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