Lateral Opinion (qt)

Qt Mac Tips

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 14:24:36 GMT

My team has been working on porting some PyQt stuff to Mac OSX, and we have run into several Qt bugs, sadly. Here are two, and the workarounds we found.

Native dialogs are broken.

Using QFileDialog.getExistingDirectory we noticed the following symptoms:

If you do nothing, the dialog went away on its own after about 20 seconds.
After you used it once, it may pop up and disappear immediately. Or not.

Solution: use the DontUseNativeDialog option.

Widgets in QTreeWidgetItems don't scroll.

When you use Widgets inside the items of a QTreeWidget (which I know, is not a common case, but hey, it happens), the widgets don't scroll with the items.

Solution: use the -graphicssystem raster options. You can even inject them into argv if the platform is darwin.

The Future of PyQt by Example

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:17:00 GMT

Three years ago, I started a series of long posts called "PyQt by Example". It reached five posts before I abandoned for a series of reasons that don't matter anymore. That series is coming back starting next week, rewritten, improved and extended.

It will do so in a new site, and the "old" posts will be retired to an archive page. Why? Well, the technologies used in some of them are obsolete or don't quite work nowadays. So, the new versions will be the preferred ones.

And while I am not promising anything, I have enough written to make this something quite longer, more nicely layouted, more interesting and make it cover more ground. BUT, while doing some checks on the traffic statistics for the old posts, some things popped out.

This was very popular: About 60% of my site's traffic goes to those five posts. Out of about 1200 posts over 12 years, 60% of the viewers go to the 0.4% of the pages. That is a lot.
It's a long tail: The traffic has not decreased in three years. If anything, it has increased

A long and tall tail.

So, all this means there is a desire for PyQt documentation that is not satisfied. I am not surprised: PyQt is great, and the recommended book is not free, so there is bound to be a lot of demand.

And, here's the not-so-rosy bit: I had unobtrusive, relevant, out-of-the-way-but-visible ads in those pages for more than two years. Of the 70000 unique visitors, not even one clicked on an ad. Don't worry, I was not expecting to get money out of them (although I would love to some day collect a $100 check instead of having google hold my money for me ad eternum).

But really? Not even one ad click? In more than two years, thousands of people? I have to wonder if I just attract cheap people ;-)

Ubuntu One APIs by Example (part 1)

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 02:17:00 GMT

One of the nice things about working at Canonical is that we produce open source software. I, specifically, work in the team that does the desktop clients for Ubuntu One which is a really cool job, and a really cool piece of software. However, one thing not enough people know, is that we offer damn nice APIs for developers. We have to, since all our client code is open source, so we need those APIs for ourselves.

So, here is a small tutorial about using some of those APIs. I did it using Python and PyQt for several reasons:

Both are great tools for prototyping
Both have good support for the required stuff (DBus, HTTP, OAuth)
It's what I know and enjoy. Since I did this code on a sunday, I am not going to use other things.

Having said that, there is nothing python-specific or Qt-specific in the code. Where I do a HTTP request using QtNetwork, you are free to use libsoup, or whatever.

So, on to the nuts and bolts. The main pieces of Ubuntu One, from a infrastructure perspective, are Ubuntu SSO Client, that handles user registration and login, and SyncDaemon, which handles file synchronization.

To interact with them, on Linux, they offer DBus interfaces. So, for example, this is a fragment of code showing a way to get the Ubuntu One credentials (this would normally be part of an object's __init__):

# Get the session bus
bus = dbus.SessionBus()

:
:
:

# Get the credentials proxy and interface
self.creds_proxy = bus.get_object("com.ubuntuone.Credentials",
                        "/credentials",
                        follow_name_owner_changes=True)

# Connect to signals so you get a call when something
# credential-related happens
self.creds_iface = dbus.Interface(self.creds_proxy,
    "com.ubuntuone.CredentialsManagement")
self.creds_proxy.connect_to_signal('CredentialsFound',
    self.creds_found)
self.creds_proxy.connect_to_signal('CredentialsNotFound',
    self.creds_not_found)
self.creds_proxy.connect_to_signal('CredentialsError',
    self.creds_error)

# Call for credentials
self._credentials = None
self.get_credentials()

You may have noticed that get_credentials doesn't actually return the credentials. What it does is, it tells SyncDaemon to fetch the credentials, and then, when/if they are there, one of the signals will be emitted, and one of the connected methods will be called. This is nice, because it means you don't have to worry about your app blocking while SyncDaemon is doing all this.

But what's in those methods we used? Not much, really!

def get_credentials(self):
    # Do we have them already? If not, get'em
    if not self._credentials:
        self.creds_proxy.find_credentials()
    # Return what we've got, could be None
    return self._credentials

def creds_found(self, data):
    # Received credentials, save them.
    print "creds_found", data
    self._credentials = data
    # Don't worry about get_quota yet ;-)
    if not self._quota_info:
        self.get_quota()

def creds_not_found(self, data):
    # No credentials, remove old ones.
    print "creds_not_found", data
    self._credentials = None

def creds_error(self, data):
    # No credentials, remove old ones.
    print "creds_error", data
    self._credentials = None

So, basically, self._credentials will hold a set of credentials, or None. Congratulations, we are now logged into Ubuntu One, so to speak.

So, let's do something useful! How about asking for how much free space there is in the account? For that, we can't use the local APIs, we have to connect to the servers, who are, after all, the ones who decide if you are over quota or not.

Access is controlled via OAuth. So, to access the API, we need to sign our requests. Here is how it's done. It's not particularly enlightening, and I did not write it, I just use it:

def sign_uri(self, uri, parameters=None):
    # Without credentials, return unsigned URL
    if not self._credentials:
        return uri
    if isinstance(uri, unicode):
        uri = bytes(iri2uri(uri))
    print "uri:", uri
    method = "GET"
    credentials = self._credentials
    consumer = oauth.OAuthConsumer(credentials["consumer_key"],
                                   credentials["consumer_secret"])
    token = oauth.OAuthToken(credentials["token"],
                             credentials["token_secret"])
    if not parameters:
        _, _, _, _, query, _ = urlparse(uri)
        parameters = dict(cgi.parse_qsl(query))
    request = oauth.OAuthRequest.from_consumer_and_token(
                                        http_url=uri,
                                        http_method=method,
                                        parameters=parameters,
                                        oauth_consumer=consumer,
                                        token=token)
    sig_method = oauth.OAuthSignatureMethod_HMAC_SHA1()
    request.sign_request(sig_method, consumer, token)
    print "SIGNED:", repr(request.to_url())
    return request.to_url()

And how do we ask for the quota usage? By accessing the https://one.ubuntu.com/api/quota/ entry point with the proper authorization, we would get a JSON dictionary with total and used space. So, here's a simple way to do it:

    # This is on __init__
    self.nam = QtNetwork.QNetworkAccessManager(self,
        finished=self.reply_finished)

:
:
:

def get_quota(self):
    """Launch quota info request."""
    uri = self.sign_uri(QUOTA_API)
    url = QtCore.QUrl()
    url.setEncodedUrl(uri)
    self.nam.get(QtNetwork.QNetworkRequest(url))

Again, see how get_quota doesn't return the quota? What happens is that get_quota will launch a HTTP request to the Ubuntu One servers, which will, eventually, reply with the data. You don't want your app to block while you do that. So, QNetworkAccessManager will call self.reply_finished when it gets the response:

def reply_finished(self, reply):
    if unicode(reply.url().path()) == u'/api/quota/':
        # Handle quota responses
        self._quota_info = json.loads(unicode(reply.readAll()))
        print "Got quota: ", self._quota_info
        # Again, don't worry about update_menu yet ;-)
        self.update_menu()

What else would be nice to have? How about getting a call whenever the status of syncdaemon changes? For example, when sync is up to date, or when you get disconnected? Again, those are DBus signals we are connecting in our __init__:

self.status_proxy = bus.get_object(
    'com.ubuntuone.SyncDaemon', '/status')
self.status_iface = dbus.Interface(self.status_proxy,
    dbus_interface='com.ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.Status')
self.status_iface.connect_to_signal(
    'StatusChanged', self.status_changed)

# Get the status as of right now
self._last_status = self.process_status(
    self.status_proxy.current_status())

And what's status_changed?

def status_changed(self, status):
    print "New status:", status
    self._last_status = self.process_status(status)
    self.update_menu()

The process_status function is boring code to convert the info from syncdaemon's status into a human-readable thing like "Sync is up-to-date". So we store that in self._last_status and update the menu.

What menu? Well, a QSystemTrayIcon's context menu! What you have read are the main pieces you need to create something useful: a Ubuntu One tray app you can use in KDE, XFCE or openbox. Or, if you are on unity and install sni-qt, a Ubuntu One app indicator!

My Ubuntu One indicator in action.

You can find the source code for the whole example app at my u1-toys project in launchpad and here is the full source code (missing some icon resources, just get the repo)

Coming soon(ish), more example apps, and cool things to do with our APIs!

PyQt Quickie: command line parsing

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:38:00 GMT

So, you are writing a PyQt app, and you want it to support command line arguments. So you do something like this:

opt_parser = OptionParser()
opt_parser.add_option("-q", dest="quickly", action="store_true",
    help="Do it quickly (default=False)")
(options, args) = opt_parser.parse_args(sys.argv)
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
:
:
:

Or maybe even QApplication([]). Ok, you are doing it wrong. And this is wrong in most tutorials, too. Why? Because Qt (and thus PyQt) supports a bunch of useful command line options already. So if you do it like in the first listing, and pass "-style=oxygen" or whatever, one of the following will happen.

OptParser is going to tell you it's not a valid option and abort
You will ignore the option and not do anything useful with it
You will have your own -style option and do two things with it

All three outcomes are less than ideal.

The right way to do this is:

opt_parser = OptionParser()
opt_parser.add_option("-q", dest="quickly", action="store_true",
    help="Do it quickly (default=False)")
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
(options, args) = opt_parser.parse_args(app.arguments())
:
:
:

This way, you give PyQt a chance to process the options it recognizes, and, then, you get to handle the rest, because app.arguments() has all Qt options removed.

The bad side of this is, you will make --help slightly slower, since it will have to build a QApplication to do nothing, and you will have undocumented options. Solution for both problems left as an exercise.

To write, and to write what.

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 03:18:00 GMT

Some of you may know I have written about 30% of a book, called "Python No Muerde", available at http://nomuerde.netmanagers.com.ar (in spanish only).That book has stagnated for a long time.

On the other hand, I wrote a very popular series of posts, called PyQt by Example, which has (you guessed it) stagnated for a long time.

The main problem with the book was that I tried to cover way too much ground. When complete, it would be a 500 page book, and that would involve writing half a dozen example apps, some of them in areas I am no expert.

The main problem with the post series is that the example is lame (a TODO app!) and expanding it is boring.

¡So, what better way to fix both things at once, than to merge them!

I will leave Python No Muerde as it is, and will do a new book, called PyQt No Muerde. It will keep the tone and language of Python No Muerde, and will even share some chapters, but will focus on developing a PyQt app or two, instead of the much more ambitious goals of Python No Muerde. It will be about 200 pages.

I have acquired permission from my superiors (my wife) to work on this project a couple of hours a day, in the early morning. So, it may move forward, or it may not. This is, as usual, an experiment, not a promise.

PyQt Quickie: Don't Get Garbage Collected

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:57:00 GMT

There is one area where Qt and Python (and in consequence PyQt) have major disagreements. That area is memory management.

While Qt has its own mechanisms to handle object allocation and disposal (the hierarchical QObject trees, smart pointers, etc.), PyQt runs on Python, so it has garbage collection.

Let's consider a simple example:

from PyQt4 import QtCore

def finished():
    print "The process is done!"
    # Quit the app
    QtCore.QCoreApplication.instance().quit()

def launch_process():
    # Do something asynchronously
    proc = QtCore.QProcess()
    proc.start("/bin/sleep 3")
    # After it finishes, call finished
    proc.finished.connect(finished)

def main():
    app = QtCore.QCoreApplication([])
    # Launch the process
    launch_process()
    app.exec_()

main()

If you run this, this is what will happen:

QProcess: Destroyed while process is still running.
The process is done!

Plus, the script never ends. Fun! The problem is that proc is being deleted at the end of launch_process because there are no more references to it.

Here is a better way to do it:

from PyQt4 import QtCore

processes = set([])

def finished():
    print "The process is done!"
    # Quit the app
    QtCore.QCoreApplication.instance().quit()

def launch_process():
    # Do something asynchronously
    proc = QtCore.QProcess()
    processes.add(proc)
    proc.start("/bin/sleep 3")
    # After it finishes, call finished
    proc.finished.connect(finished)

def main():
    app = QtCore.QCoreApplication([])
    # Launch the process
    launch_process()
    app.exec_()

main()

Here, we add a global processes set and add proc there so we always keep a reference to it. Now, the program works as intended. However, it still has an issue: we are leaking QProcess objects.

While in this case the leak is very short-lived, since we are ending the program right after the process ends, in a real program this is not a good idea.

So, we would need to add a way to remove proc from processes in finished. This is not as easy as it may seem. Here is an idea that will not work as you expect:

def launch_process():
    # Do something asynchronously
    proc = QtCore.QProcess()
    processes.add(proc)
    proc.start("/bin/sleep 3")
    # Remove the process from the global set when done
    proc.finished.connect(lambda: processes.remove(proc))
    # After it finishes, call finished
    proc.finished.connect(finished)

In this version, we will still leak proc, even though processes is empty! Why? Because we are keeping a reference to proc in the lambda!

I don't really have a good answer for that that doesn't involve turning everything into members of a QObject and using sender to figure out what process is ending, or using QSignalMapper. That version is left as an exercise.

People doing useful stuff with my toys

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:33:00 GMT

About a year ago, I wrote a small web browser, called De Vicenzo just for fun.

But hey, someone went and madeit useful for something! Specifically, to provide previews when doing sphix docs

That's cool :)

Shipping your PyQt app for windows

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:20:00 GMT

I have written about this in the past, with the general conclusion being "it's a pain in the ass".

So, now, here is how it's done.

Start with a working PyQt application. In this example, I will use devicenzo.py mostly because:
1. It is a working PyQt application.
2. It uses a big chunk of PyQt
3. It's easy to test
Now you need a setup.py. Here's one that works, with extensive commments.

# We will be using py2exe to build the binaries.
# You may use other tools, but I know this one.

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe

# Now you need to pass arguments to setup
# windows is a list of scripts that have their own UI and
# thus don't need to run in a console.

setup(windows=['devicenzo.py'],
      options={

# And now, configure py2exe by passing more options;

          'py2exe': {

# This is magic: if you don't add these, your .exe may
# or may not work on older/newer versions of windows.

              "dll_excludes": [
                  "MSVCP90.dll",
                  "MSWSOCK.dll",
                  "mswsock.dll",
                  "powrprof.dll",
                  ],

# Py2exe will not figure out that you need these on its own.
# You may need one, the other, or both.

              'includes': [
                  'sip',
                  'PyQt4.QtNetwork',
                  ],

# Optional: make one big exe with everything in it, or
# a folder with many things in it. Your choice
#             'bundle_files': 1,
          }
      },

# Qt's dynamically loaded plugins and py2exe really don't
# get along.

data_files = [
            ('phonon_backend', [
                'C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\PyQt4\plugins\phonon_backend\phonon_ds94.dll'
                ]),
            ('imageplugins', [
            'c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\PyQt4\plugins\imageformats\qgif4.dll',
            'c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\PyQt4\plugins\imageformats\qjpeg4.dll',
            'c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\PyQt4\plugins\imageformats\qsvg4.dll',
            ]),
],

# If you choose the bundle above, you may want to use this, too.
#     zipfile=None,
)

Run python setup.py py2exe and get a dist folder full of binary goodness.

And that's it. Except of course, that's not it.

What this will do is create a binary set, either a folder full of things, or a single EXE file. And that's not enough. You have to consider at least the following:

Put everything in resource files: images, qss files, icons, etc. Every file your app needs? Put it in a resource file and load it from there. That way you don't have to care about them if you go the "one exe" road.
Compile .ui files to .py (same reason)
Figure out if you use Qt's plugins, and make them work. This includes: using Phonon, using QtSQL, and using any image formats other than PNG.

After you have that, are you done? NO!

Your windows user will want an installer. I am not going to go into details, but I had a good time using BitRock's InstallBuilder for Qt. It's a nice tool, and it works. That's a lot in this field.

But is that all? NO!

You have to take care of the Visual Studio Runtime. My suggestion? Get a copy of the 1.1MB vcredist_x86.exe (not the larger one, the 1.1MB one), and either tell people to install it manually, or add it to your installer. You are legally allowed (AFAIK) to redistribute that thing as a whole. But not what's in it (unless you have a VS license).

And we are done? NO!

Once you run your app "installed", if it ever prints anything to stderr, you will get either a dialog telling you it did, or worse (if you are in aything newer than XP), a dialog telling you it can't write to a log file, and the app will never work again.

This is because py2exe catches stderr and tries to save it on a logfile. Which it tries to create in the same folder as the binary. Which is usually not allowed because of permissions.

Solution? Your app should never write to stderr. Write an excepthook and catch that. And then remove stderr or replace it with a log file, or something. Just don't let py2exe do it, because the way py2exe does it is broken.

And is that it?

Well, basically yes. Of course you should get 4 or 5 different versions of windows to test it on, but you are pretty much free to ship your app as you wish. Oh, mind you, don't upload it to downloads.com because they will wrap your installer in a larger one that installs bloatware and crap.

So, there you go.

New golfing challenge: PatoCabrera

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:47:00 GMT

In the spirit of the De Vicenzo web browser, I am starting a new program, called Pato Cabrera. Here are the rules:

Twitter client (no identi.ca in the first version, but to be added later)
Has these features: http://pastebin.lugmen.org.ar/6464
Has to be implemented before April 4th
Smaller than 16384 bytes (of python code) but may be larger because of artwork.

Let's see how it works :-)

OK, so THAT is how much browser I can put in 128 lines of code.

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 21:45:00 GMT

I have already posted a couple of times (1, 2) about De Vicenzo , an attempt to implement the rest of the browser, starting with PyQt's WebKit... limiting myself to 128 lines of code.

Of course I could do more, but I have my standards!

No using ;
No if whatever: f()

Other than that, I did a lot of dirty tricks, but right now, it's a fairly complete browser, and it has 127 lines of code (according to sloccount) so that's enough playing and it's time to go back to real work.

But first, let's consider how some features were implemented (I'll wrap the lines so they page stays reasonably narrow), and also look at the "normal" versions of the same (the "normal" code is not tested, please tell me if it's broken ;-).

This is not something you should learn how to do. In fact, this is almost a treatise on how not to do things. This is some of the least pythonic, less clear code you will see this week.

It is short, and it is expressive. But it is ugly.

I'll discuss this version.

Proxy Support

A browser is not much of a browser if you can't use it without a proxy, but luckily Qt's network stack has good proxy support. The trick was configuring it.

De Vicenzo supports HTTP and SOCKS proxies by parsing a http_proxy environment variable and setting Qt's application-wide proxy:

 proxy_url = QtCore.QUrl(os.environ.get('http_proxy', ''))
 QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy.setApplicationProxy(QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy(\
 QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy.HttpProxy if unicode(proxy_url.scheme()).startswith('http')\
 else QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy.Socks5Proxy, proxy_url.host(),\
 proxy_url.port(), proxy_url.userName(), proxy_url.password())) if\
'http_proxy' in os.environ else None

How would that look in normal code?

if 'http_proxy' in os.environ:
    proxy_url = QtCore.QUrl(os.environ['http_proxy'])
    if unicode(proxy_url.scheme()).starstswith('http'):
        protocol = QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy.HttpProxy
    else:
        protocol = QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy.Socks5Proxy
    QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy.setApplicationProxy(
        QtNetwork.QNetworkProxy(
            protocol,
            proxy_url.host(),
            proxy_url.port(),
            proxy_url.userName(),
            proxy_url.password()))

As you can see, the main abuses against python here are the use of the ternary operator as a one-line if (and nesting it), and line length.

Persistent Cookies

You really need this, since you want to stay logged into your sites between sessions. For this, first I needed to write some persistence mechanism, and then save/restore the cookies there.

Here's how the persistence is done (settings is a global QSettings instance):

def put(self, key, value):
    "Persist an object somewhere under a given key"
    settings.setValue(key, json.dumps(value))
    settings.sync()

def get(self, key, default=None):
    "Get the object stored under 'key' in persistent storage, or the default value"
    v = settings.value(key)
    return json.loads(unicode(v.toString())) if v.isValid() else default

It's not terribly weird code, except for the use of the ternary operator in the last line. The use of json ensures that as long as reasonable things are persisted, you will get them with the same type as you put them without needing to convert them or call special methods.

So, how do you save/restore the cookies? First, you need to access the cookie jar. I couldn't find whether there is a global one, or a per-webview one, so I created a QNetworkCookieJar in line 24 and assign it to each web page in line 107.

# Save the cookies, in the window's closeEvent
self.put("cookiejar", [str(c.toRawForm()) for c in self.cookies.allCookies()])

# Restore the cookies, in the window's __init__
self.cookies.setAllCookies([QtNetwork.QNetworkCookie.parseCookies(c)[0]\
for c in self.get("cookiejar", [])])

Here I confess I am guilty of using list comprehensions when a for loop would have been the correct thing.

I use the same trick when restoring the open tabs, with the added misfeature of using a list comprehension and throwing away the result:

# get("tabs") is a list of URLs
[self.addTab(QtCore.QUrl(u)) for u in self.get("tabs", [])]

Using Properties and Signals in Object Creation

This is a feature of recent PyQt versions: if you pass property names as keyword arguments when you create an object, they are assigned the value. If you pass a signal as a keyword argument, they are connected to the given value.

This is a really great feature that helps you create clear, local code, and it's a great thing to have. But if you are writing evil code... well, you can go to hell on a handbasket using it.

This is all over the place in De Vicenzo, and here's one example (yes, this is one line):

QtWebKit.QWebView.__init__(self, loadProgress=lambda v:\
(self.pbar.show(), self.pbar.setValue(v)) if self.amCurrent() else\
None, loadFinished=self.pbar.hide, loadStarted=lambda:\
self.pbar.show() if self.amCurrent() else None, titleChanged=lambda\
t: container.tabs.setTabText(container.tabs.indexOf(self), t) or\
(container.setWindowTitle(t) if self.amCurrent() else None))

Oh, boy, where do I start with this one.

There are lambda expressions used to define the callbacks in-place instead of just connecting to a real function or method.

There are lambdas that contain the ternary operator:

loadStarted=lambda:\
    self.pbar.show() if self.amCurrent() else None

There are lambdas that use or or a tuple to trick python into doing two things in a single lambda!

loadProgress=lambda v:\
(self.pbar.show(), self.pbar.setValue(v)) if self.amCurrent() else\
None

I won't even try to untangle this for educational purposes, but let's just say that line contains what should be replaced by 3 methods, and should be spread over 6 lines or more.

Download Manager

Ok, calling it a manager is overreaching, since you can't stop them once they start, but hey, it lets you download things and keep on browsing, and reports the progress!

First, on line 16 I created a bars dictionary for general bookkeeping of the downloads.

Then, I needed to delegate the unsupported content to the right method, and that's done in lines 108 and 109

What that does is basically that whenever you click on something WebKit can't handle, the method fetch will be called and passed the network request.

def fetch(self, reply):
    destination = QtGui.QFileDialog.getSaveFileName(self, \
        "Save File", os.path.expanduser(os.path.join('~',\
            unicode(reply.url().path()).split('/')[-1])))
    if destination:
        bar = QtGui.QProgressBar(format='%p% - ' +
            os.path.basename(unicode(destination)))
        self.statusBar().addPermanentWidget(bar)
        reply.downloadProgress.connect(self.progress)
        reply.finished.connect(self.finished)
        self.bars[unicode(reply.url().toString())] = [bar, reply,\
            unicode(destination)]

No real code golfing here, except for long lines, but once you break them reasonably, this is pretty much the obvious way to do it:

Ask for a filename
Create a progressbar, put it in the statusbar, and connect it to the download's progress signals.

Then, of course, we need ths progress slot, that updates the progressbar:

progress = lambda self, received, total:\
    self.bars[unicode(self.sender().url().toString())][0]\
    .setValue(100. * received / total)

Yes, I defined a method as a lambda to save 1 line. [facepalm]

And the finished slot for when the download is done:

def finished(self):
    reply = self.sender()
    url = unicode(reply.url().toString())
    bar, _, fname = self.bars[url]
    redirURL = unicode(reply.attribute(QtNetwork.QNetworkRequest.\
        RedirectionTargetAttribute).toString())
    del self.bars[url]
    bar.deleteLater()
    if redirURL and redirURL != url:
        return self.fetch(redirURL, fname)
    with open(fname, 'wb') as f:
        f.write(str(reply.readAll()))

Notice that it even handles redirections sanely! Beyond that, it just hides the progress bar, saves the data, end of story. The longest line is not even my fault!

There is a big inefficiency in that the whole file is kept in memory until the end. If you download a DVD image, that's gonna sting.

Also, using with saves a line and doesn't leak a file handle, compared to the alternatives.

Printing

Again Qt saved me, because doing this manually would have been a pain. However, it turns out that printing is just ... there? Qt, specially when used via PyQt is such an awesomely rich environment.

self.previewer = QtGui.QPrintPreviewDialog(\
    paintRequested=self.print_)
self.do_print = QtGui.QShortcut("Ctrl+p",\
    self, activated=self.previewer.exec_)

There's not even any need to golf here, that's exactly as much code as you need to hook Ctrl+p to make a QWebView print.

Other Tricks

There are no other tricks. All that's left is creating widgets, connecting things to one another, and enjoying the awesome experience of programming PyQt, where you can write a whole web browser (except the engine) in 127 lines of code.