Qt QGraphicsView - layout not shrinking & sizeHint, minimumSizeHint, etc. not called - c++

I have the following, quite simple setup:
In a QWidget that is displayed as a window (no parent), there is a single QVBoxLayout.
In that QVBoxLayout, there is a single custom QGraphicsView.
The size policy of that custom QGraphicsView is set to Preferred/Preferred and setHeightForWidth set to true (and overwritten in the custom class) - I want to preserve aspect ratio.
The whole constructor of the widget here:
graphicsView = new CustomGraphicsView();
QVBoxLayout *layout = new QVBoxLayout();
layout->setMargin(0);
QSizePolicy sp(QSizePolicy::Preferred, QSizePolicy::Preferred);
sp.setHeightForWidth(true);
graphicsView->setSizePolicy(sp);
layout->addWidget(graphicsView);
setLayout(layout);
The setup works, and the aspect ratio is maintained when dragging the width of the window bigger (the height grows with it).
But as soon as I drag the window width smaller, the aspect ratio of the graphics view is maintained, but the height of the window itself won't shrink. The result being a small graphics view with lots of space above and below it that shouldn't be there.
Investigating it further I was trying to find out where things break, so I overloaded all the sizeHint(), minimumSize(), minimumHeight(), etc. functions of my custom graphics view.
Just to discover that not a single one of them is ever being called while I am manually resizing the window. The only thing called as expected is heightForWidth - which returns my calculated value - but its return value is not applied when the window is shrinking.
So, not only do I not know why the layout won't shrink on its own despite having the Preferred vertical policy (which explicity says "The widget can be expanded, but there is no advantage to it being larger than sizeHint()").
I also don't know how the layout gets the size from the widget to begin with. I assumed sizeHint() since all of the documentation permanently refers to it, but that is obviously wrong in this case.
What I already tried is to set the vertical policy to every possible value. None of them would cause the window to grow and shrink as it is supposed to.
My current workaround:
I have added the resizeEvent(...) function to the widget and inside that, I manually resize() the whole widget if its height exceeds the value returned by the heightForWidth() function of the custom graphics widget.
Okay as far as workarounds go, but it leads to heavy flickering (as usual when resizing inside a resizeEvent).
Any ideas on either problem?

Related

Lay out an image on a Qt dialog

How to add an image to a dialog in Qt?
I know this has been often asked in the past and most answers come up with a QLabel and its setPixmap member. However, this usually is not what the user (me) intends:
A QLabel with a pixmap set does not participate in the surrounding QLayout. That is, it simply refuses to resize when the dialog is resized, like e.g., a QPushButton would do. Two QPushButtons next to each other in a QHorizontalLayout will (something like) equally divide the available horizontal space between them. A QLabe with a pixmap next to a QPushButton in the same layout will just stay fixed in size.
By default, a naked QLabel won't resize its contents when it's resized.
But when it does (QLabel::setResizeContents) it won't keep aspect ratio.
Is there any native way to have a pixmap shown on a dialog and have it reasonably participate in the layout?
Item resizing can be managed via sizePolicy property. From Qt documentation:
sizePolicy : QSizePolicy
This property holds the default layout behavior of the widget.
If there is a QLayout that manages this widget's children, the size
policy specified by that layout is used. If there is no such QLayout,
the result of this function is used.
The default policy is Preferred/Preferred, which means that the widget
can be freely resized, but prefers to be the size sizeHint() returns.
Button-like widgets set the size policy to specify that they may
stretch horizontally, but are fixed vertically. The same applies to
lineedit controls (such as QLineEdit, QSpinBox or an editable
QComboBox) and other horizontally orientated widgets (such as
QProgressBar). QToolButton's are normally square, so they allow growth
in both directions. Widgets that support different directions (such as
QSlider, QScrollBar or QHeader) specify stretching in the respective
direction only. Widgets that can provide scroll bars (usually
subclasses of QScrollArea) tend to specify that they can use
additional space, and that they can make do with less than sizeHint().
I think you are searching for QSizePolicy::Expanding size policy:
The sizeHint() is a sensible size, but the widget can be shrunk and
still be useful. The widget can make use of extra space, so it should
get as much space as possible (e.g. the horizontal direction of a
horizontal slider).
Set this for your QLabel and check how it will resize. Try other values from QSizePolicy::Policy enum.

Qt Set geometry to a newly created widget

I have a MainWindow in qt with a Tab Widget attached, containing a tab called "tab_upload".
On this tab i got a label with the text "Genres" (it's a library application) with a "plus" button attached. I want to be able to get a new QLineEdit every time I click this button , positioned inline with the other ones. To get the right coordonates is easy but I'm not able to properly set the geometry of the new QLineEdit. It doesn't matter what I type in the setGeometry function, the QLineEdit will always appear in the center.
And also, if I press the button a second time I get an error saying
QWidget::setLayout: Attempting to set QLayout "" on QWidget "tab_upload", which already has a layout.
if(nr_genres < 4)
{
QLineEdit *newgen = new QLineEdit(ui->tab_upload);
int x = 5 + nr_genres * 90;
newgen->setGeometry(x,187,90,25);
QVBoxLayout *layout = new QVBoxLayout;
layout->addWidget(newgen);
ui->tab_upload->setLayout(layout);
}
Layouts are designed to have control over the positioning of widgets:
All QWidget subclasses can use layouts to manage their children. The QWidget::setLayout() function applies a layout to a widget. When a layout is set on a widget in this way, it takes charge of the following tasks:
Positioning of child widgets.
Sensible default sizes for windows.
Sensible minimum sizes for windows.
Resize handling.
Automatic updates when contents change:
Font size, text or other contents of
child widgets.
Hiding or showing a child widget.
Removal of child widgets.
You should read this documentation for information about adding widgets to layouts:
All the widgets will initially be allocated an amount of space in accordance with their QWidget::sizePolicy() and QWidget::sizeHint().
If any of the widgets have stretch factors set, with a value greater than zero, then they are allocated space in proportion to their stretch factor (explained below).
If any of the widgets have stretch factors set to zero they will only get more space if no other widgets want the space. Of these, space is allocated to widgets with an Expanding size policy first.
Any widgets that are allocated less space than their minimum size (or minimum size hint if no minimum size is specified) are allocated this minimum size they require. (Widgets don't have to have a minimum size or minimum size hint in which case the stretch factor is their determining factor.)
Any widgets that are allocated more space than their maximum size are allocated the maximum size space they require. (Widgets do not have to have a maximum size in which case the stretch factor is their determining factor.)
I think that the easiest way to manage widgets in layouts is to use the Design mode in Qt Creator, and specify a minimumSize and/or maximumSize for each widget, along with a sizePolicy. This way, you can see what happens and experiment with different values.
With regards to the error you're receiving, it is mentioned in the documentation for setLayout():
If there already is a layout manager installed on this widget, QWidget won't let you install another. You must first delete the existing layout manager (returned by layout()) before you can call setLayout() with the new layout.
QWidget::setLayout: Attempting to set QLayout "" on QWidget
"tab_upload", which already has a layout.
You set new layout on widget that already contains layout from previous click on "plus" button. This problem can be solve by next way:
QLineEdit *newgen = new QLineEdit(ui->tab_upload);
QVBoxLayout *layout = static_cast<QVBoxLayout*>(ui->tab_upload->layout());
if(!layout) {
layout = new QVBoxLayout(ui->tab_upload);
ui->tab_upload->setLayout(layout);
}
layout->addWidget(newgen);
But you cannot directly set geometry for your QLineEdit because geometry was set by layout. If I understand the problem, this code must help you. It creates new QLineEdit after each click on "plus" button and append QLineEdit to existing layout.

How to resize splitter widgets programmatically in Qt?

I use QSplitter to place some widgets side by side.
Being a user, I can resize those widgets just dragging a splitter.
Being a programmer, I don't know how to specify exactly what width and what height do I want at the moment.
That's my original state (adjusted by different stretches).
I tried to use setFixedSize(), but after that call the user can't resize widgets by itself anymore (and that's definitely correct behavior, because the size gets 'fixed').
If I use resize(), it has almost no effect. The widget is resized, but (!) incorrectly and (!) when I start dragging again the widget gets its initial state.
Is there any way to resize that left widget in code correctly? I don't want to have fixed size but resize() doesn't work properly, as you can see. So what should I do?
QSplitter hast its method QSplitter::setSizes(QList<int>) where each entry in the list is the size of the widget in pixels, from left to right or top to bottom respectively. The method does not require you to know the exact width, it still works with guessed sizes.
I use this functionality for instance to store the user defined sizes (obtained by QSplitter::sizes()) in a QSettings instance on the program shutdown and reapply them when the software is started again. If they are not set for some reason I just set the overall width divided by the number of widgets in the splitter and it works fine enough as an initial state.

Widget same size as it's children?

In Qt, how can I have a widget which automatically sizes itself according to the size of it's children?
For example, if I have a QGroupBox which contains a QHBoxLayout which contains some QPushButtons, I would like the QGroupBox to automatically calculate it's size so that it is no bigger and no smaller than necessary to fit all of the QPushButtons.
Ideally I would like to be able to do this in Qt Designer so that I can create a .ui file which already knows how to size the QGroupBox, however I am also opening to deriving from a class inside a .ui file and doing the resizing manually.
I have tried placing the QGroupBox inside it's own layout (with and without a spacer) but this just resizes the QGroupBox to the smallest possible size so that none of the children are visible.
There are two things to pay attention to:
Set the size policies appropriately on the children in the groupbox. You literally need to think what the buttons can do - most likely, you do not want the buttons to either grow or shrink, so setting both of their size policies to Fixed is the right thing to do. You could, possibly, let the buttons expand horizontally, so the horizontal policy of MinimumExpanding is an option.
Set the size constraint on the layout in the groupbox to act according to your objective:
ui->groupbox->layout()->setConstraint(QLayout::SetMinAndMaxSize);
Of course, the groupbox will be inside of some layout in its parent window, but that doesn't matter.
You'll probably have the most luck by sub classing QGroupBox and overriding sizeHint or other sizing functions to loop through children and calculate the minimum bounding rectangle. Depending on how dynamic the group box is, managing connections to new widgets might be a small challenge.

How to resize QWidget in a layout while aligning it to the center and maintaining aspect ratio

Ok, so I'd like to display an image with qt where the image resizes with the browser and maintains the aspect ratio while also remaining centered in the window. I can get the resizing with aspect ratio to work correctly, but when I align it with Qt::AlignCenter, the qwidget no longer resizes (remains a fixed size). So basically, I can get either option to work but not together.
A good example of what I'm trying to do would be the imshow() function in matlab. This resizes the image while maintaining the aspect ratio and also centering the image in the window. The code I have is soemthing like this:
void roilayout::resizeEvent(QResizeEvent *event)
{
QSize p(roiview->refimage->size());
p.scale(roiview->view->size(), Qt::KeepAspectRatio);
roiview->view->resize(p);
}
and in the constructor:
roiview = new roiwindow;
roiview->view->setViewportUpdateMode(QGraphicsView::FullViewportUpdate);
roiview->view->setCursor(Qt::CrossCursor);
roiview->view->setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff);
roiview->view->setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff);
QHBoxLayout *layoutContainer = new QHBoxLayout;
layoutContainer->addWidget(roiview->view);
setLayout(layoutContainer);
I searched google and couldnt find anything. Also asked a similar question a little while back but from the answers it appears I didn't ask the question clearly enough. Thanks.
A couple of things: First it would be helpful to know what type of control "view" is.
Also, I don't think you should need to resize the child control "view" (whatever type it is) within the parent's resizeEvent() callback.
A better solution might be to set the sizeHint policy on the child widget to automatically expand.