Build photo editor interface using Qt
<p>I would like to create an application using Qt (PyQt5 specifically) that has a photo editor like interface. More specifically, I would like it to have:</p>

<ul>
<li>No main window</li>
<li>Free-floating toolbar</li>
<li>Free-floating context window</li>
<li>Startup dialog</li>
<li>Edit-windows</li>
</ul>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IHOJx.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IHOJx.jpg" alt="Example Photo Editor Interface (Acorn)"></a></p>

<p>The idea is to have the toolbar and context window persist for as along as the application is running. The user then opens one or multiple documents (e.g. images in the photo editor example) and uses the options in the toolbar to modify the document(s).</p>

<p>My first question is; does this type of application interface have a specific name, something akin to MDI or SDI? I've been searching for "photo editor interface" and variations on that, but haven't been able to find a search string that seems to hit the mark. For instance, I've tried "build a photo editor type interface with Qt" but it doesn't yield anything useful.</p>

<p>The second question I have is, what is the best way to build a Qt application that doesn't spawn a main window? It seems like I could kludge an assortment of dialogs together to make this happen, but I would really like to use a lot of the functionality of QMainWindow (toolbars, menus, top-level management of the application). Is there a way to launch QMainWindow, display the menu and toolbar, but suppress the main window?   </p>

<p>I plan to primarily use this application on OSX, but would also like it to perform well on Windows and Linux.</p>