Both interesting workarounds. The 'const' construct in all its flavors drives me crazy...
Grumble.
Anyway, the way I got around it was to define a couple of more signals and slots and connect them up to the created object, rather than rely on keeping a pointer around. That satisfies the issue of not accessing something if it's deleted (which was the intent of using QPointer in the first place), and 'connect' does not appear to violate the 'const' qualification.
Thanks for the pointers (ar, ar). Keep them in mind for future necessities.