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Today marks the release of dupeGuru PE 1.7.0. The Windows version of it now uses Qt (through PyQt) as a GUI toolkit.

The GUI code for the Windows versions of dupeGuru and musicGuru has been in C# since 2006. At first, I liked it (it was, better than Delphi 5, which was previously used for the GUI code), but I grew increasingly tired of Visual Studio. Compared to my OS X development setup (which includes TextMate), Visual Studio feels awkward.

Qt has a few quirks, but it is a pretty nice toolkit. Moreover, its Python bridge (PyQt) is very well done. Even better: with a few tweaks, that same code will run on Linux (I know, there's Mono on the .Net side that I could have used, but there were some issues with the Python bridge. Also, Microsoft stuff on Linux feels bad). I just have to figure out how to package it.

The main reason for this move is not the awkwardness of Visual Studio or the lure of Linux, it's rather the fact that I could never get Python's new multiprocessing module to work with the Python for .Net bridge (maybe it's just me who's stupid though). Because of that, only the OS X version of dupeGuru PE (since 1.6) could use all CPU cores during scanning. Now, the Windows version does it too.

This move to Qt means nothing for the OS X versions of my applications. Although Qt has a theme for OS X, Qt-based applications on OS X feel foreign. For the same reason I ditched wxPython in 2005, I'll stay with Cocoa now.

Because this is a complete rewrite of the GUI code, there are probably some glitches. Let me know if you find any.

I released moneyGuru 1.5.0 today, which adds a whole lot of things. Among those, printing. Now, you can print whatever is currently shown in moneyGuru. You want a Profit & Loss report for last year? Just go to the Profit & Loss view, set your date range to 2008, and hit Print.

I also started accepting purchases directly in Euro, in addition to USD. With the new "Multi-Currency Balance" feature in moneyGuru, I saw just how much Paypal was charging me for currency conversion (the rates they offer is always roughly 2% in their favor compared to the mid-market rates), and that's a pretty hefty sum (not even counting what credit cards charge customers to convert EUR to USD!). Now I have to keep Euro prices up-to-date depending on the current exchange rates (maybe ending up with an automatic system), but I think it will be worth the effort in the long run.

Since the moneyGuru 1.4.0 release, I decided to start producing screencasts about moneyGuru. My first screencast is now published, but I realized during the process that this stuff is hard to do!