Our experience with Designer started in Qt3.
Qt3
At that point, Designer was useful mainly to generate code that you would then compile into your application. We started using for that purpose but with all generated code, once you edit it, you can no longer go back and regenerate it without losing your edits. We ended up just taking the generated code and doing everything by hand henceforth.
Qt4
Qt4 has improved on Designer significantly. No longer does it only generate code, but you can dynamically load in your Designer files (in xml) and dynamically connect them to the running objects in your program — no generated code however, you do have to name the items in Designer and stick with the names to not break your code.
My assessment is that it’s nowhere near as useful as Interface Builder on Mac OS X, but at this point, I could see using the Designer files directly in a program.
We haven’t moved back to Designer since Qt3, but still use it to prototype, and debug layouts.
For your problems:
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You could probably get away with using the standard dialogs that Qt offers.
QInputDialog or if you subclass QDialog, make sure to use QButtonDialogBox
to make sure your buttons have the proper platform-layout. -
You could probably do something more limited like xPad with limited Designer functionality.
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I wouldn’t think you could write something like OpenOffice solely with Designer but maybe that’s not the point.
I’d use Designer as another tool, just like your text editor. Once you find the limitations, try a different tool for that new problem. I totally agree with Steve S that one advantage of Designer is that someone else who’s not a programmer can do the layout.