I'm working on a tool that generates a grid of hexagons that the user can click on to cycle through certain states (Enemy, ally etc). So far, I've been able to generate the hexes as Polygons.
I'm fairly new to Windows programming and the Win32 API. I know how to create a regular button, but what would be the best way to deal with what I need?
The options that come to mind are:
Make the hex's pseudo-buttons. As in store the states of the hex objects and just draw the text on each hex as the user clicks on them.
Make actual hexagon shaped buttons using CreateWindow. I've found some examples of how to create different shaped buttons, but haven't tried myself.
Create image files to cycle through.
What is the correct way to go to do this? By correct I mean best practice.
If you are already drawing the hexagons (it sounds like you are) then making hexagon shaped buttons doesn't really do much for you. You can do the hit testing yourself to determine which pseudo-button was clicked. This avoids having Windows manage many small objects that you already have complete data about. And drawing the text on these buttons will be at least as fast as needing Windows to do it.
Related
I am trying to place some overlay text over a wxPanel.
I have several panels with completely different Content but I want to place this overlay text over all of these panels in the top right Corner of the panel.
I am restricted to wxWidgets 2.8.12..
Do you see any way to achieve this behaviour?
Edit:
Here a bit more detailed Version of what I am trying to do:
I have a Layout that consists of e.g. 5 containers and each container can contain a module. A module can be either wxPanels that contain Plain text or Input controls or for example a OpenGL canvas or an Image or something else.
Because I have much content and it does not fit on a single page I want to make the modules inside a Container exchangeable. It would be also nice if the user is able to perform this action only by using its keyboard. E.g. if he presses the key "3" the content of the third container has to be switched.
To handle these shortcuts isn't a problem. However I need to signalize to the user the identifier / hotkey of the containers.
I could do this by placing a additional headline above each container, but I want to waste as little space as possible on the gui.
I also could draw directly to the modules content, but I would have to do this for every module and every module is designed in a different way (images, multi column, opengl, ...) and maybe even by different persons.
So I am looking for a simple solution to indicate the number of these containers that does not consume that much space.
Thanks for your help
You can use a wxWindowDC to draw anywhere on the window, even on child windows. However anything you draw will be painted over whenever the windows or controls repaint themselves. You can draw your overlay in an UpdateUI event handler to minimize this. I have used this approach with success on Windows with wxWidgets 2.8.12. Not sure if it works with OpenGL though.
I am designing a GUI in Qt that has placeholders for a number of images (images will be set and updated at run time) along with some input fields (QLineEdits with QLabels grouped into QGroupBoxes). I am using a technique similar to the answer here:
How do I make an image resize to scale in Qt?
for the image display widgets. Some are a class that inherits from QWidget that can draw an aspect-scaled image, others are a class that inherits from QLabel that can do the same and also display text. These are custom C++ classes.
The problem I am having is with the layout and getting things spaced correctly. I am using Qt Designer to layout the GUI. Since the image widgets are "empty" they don't exert a lot of "force" on the other widgets and the other widgets tend to dominate even though I don't need the other widgets to be that big. The QLineEdits especially like to be as wide as they can be. I want to GUI to be adaptable for different sizes (to accommodate different screen resolutions) so I don't really want to set a lot of sizes manually if I can help it.
I do not have a lot of experience in Qt and managing layouts. What I know I have mostly learned from playing around with it. I have tried searching for similar situations without much success. I can't figure out the terms to use for my specific situation. Does anyone have any suggestions for what I can do to better control the layout? Alternatively, are there any good resources for learning how to manage Qt's layouts? The Qt documentation I have looked at is fairly basic. There are a lot of options, most of which I am unsure exactly how they should work, and the trial-and-error approach is getting to be too cumbersome for more complex layouts.
I am using Qt 4.8.
Sorry to be vague. This is a work project and I would rather not post exactly what I have. And coming up with a generic example will take time. I think my questions are generic enough that it shouldn't matter. If a more specific example is needed, I can try to throw something together.
Edit:
Here is what the layout looks like in Designer right now. The black boxes are redacted labels. The orange boxes are where images will go. The one in the top-left corner is a particular problem. I currently have the top and bottom halves on the left in a splitter in an effort to make things fit better. I think that may be making it worse.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/nRRg3.png (long-time reader, first-time poster :-/)
Making the "What I want it to look like" picture is going to take a bit longer. It may be easy to see what I don't like. The input fields need to be much smaller to make room for the images.
Edit2:
And here's something closer to what I would like. The upper-left and right-hand images are larger and actually visible. I might like the boxes in the lower-middle to be even bigger, but there's only so much room. If I can get the layout right, I'm hoping that will optimize the size of everything for a given window size.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/yvLvi.png
I am building an editor using C++/Qt which has a click-and-drag feel to it. The behavour is similar to schematic editors (Eagle, KiCAD, etc), Microsoft Visio, or other programs where you drag objects from a toolbar into a central editing area.
My problem is that when the user clicks inside the custom widget I want to be able to select the instance of the box-like object and manipulate it. There will also be lines connecting the boxes together. However, I can't decide on an efficient method for selecting those objects.
I have two main thoughts on how to do the programming for this: The first is that the widget which is drawing the entire editor would simply encapsulate every one of the instances of the box. The other is to have each instance of the box (which is in my Model) carry with it an instance of a QWidget which would handle rendering the box (which would be in my View...but it would end up being strongly attached to the model). As for the lines connecting them, since they don't have a square bounding boxes they will have to be rendered by the containing widget.
So here is the summary of how I see this being done:
The editor widget turns into a container which holds the widgets and the widgets process their own click events. The potential issues here are that I don't know how to make the custom widget turn into a layout which lets click-and-drag functionality.
The editor widget takes care of all the rendering and processes the mouse clicks (the easier way in that I don't have to worry about layout...its just selecting the instances efficiently that I don't know what would be best).
So, now that there is a bit of background, for the 2nd method I plan on having each box-like instance having a bounding rectangle and the lines being represented by 3-4 pixel wide bounding rectangle segments (they are at 90 degree angles). I could iterate through every single box and line, but that seems really inefficient.
The big question: Is there some sort of data structure I can hold rectangles in and link them to widgets (or anything else for that matter) and then give it two coordinates (such as mouse coordinates) and have it spit me out the bounding box or linked object that those coordinates are inside of?
It sounds like your real question is about finding a good way to implement your editor, not the specifics of rectangle intersection performance.
You may be interested in Qt's "Diagram Scene" example project, which demonstrates the QGraphicsScene API. It sounds like a good fit for the scenario you describe. (The full source for the example ships with Qt.)
The best part is that you still don't have to implement hit testing yourself, because the API already provides what you are looking for (e.g., QGraphicsScene::itemAt()).
It's worth noting that internally, QGraphicsScene uses a simple iterative method to perform hit tests. As others have pointed out, this isn't going to be a serious bottleneck unless your scenes have a lot of individual items.
I'm working on an application, and part of it is making the user create a shapes such as squares or rectangles. I'm wondering if there is a function in wxwidgets that enable the user to do that. What i want to do is the user will click this button then he/she can draw a square or rectangle in his/her desired size. It is like in paint where you can make your own size in your desired size. Is that possible in wxwidgets and codeblocks? maybe some related links or tutorials or anything that will help. thanks !!
You should use this contrib library:
Object Graphics Library
OGL defines an API for applications that need to display objects connected by lines. The objects can be moved around and interacted with. You can find this in contrib/src/ogl, contrib/include/wx/ogl, and contrib/samples/ogl.
This is the link:
http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.8/wx_utilities.html
Max
Titles sais context here is "drawing", ok.
But in case you are talking about user-created rectangles as means of selecting stuff (or users end up here while searching for that context), jargon for that is rectangles as selection is "marquee selection", and you would look into Wx::Overlay to accomplish that.
I'm using QT creator and have all my methods etc designed and trying to design a UI and I'm not sure what widget I should be using to reference my puzzle layout.
I've been reading over the documentation for a while and I still am nowhere closer to finding a solution to what I should be using to display my values. I know what I should like but all I seem to find information on is various layouts of entry boxes that are in no way linked. I have no problem with coding it myself to communicate with my classes if I just knew what to use to start off with.
I need something that can help me create a layout that has up to two numbers with positions specific to the type of hint it is with a slash between the hints, black blocks that are neither hints nor stored values and squares that have values that can take up the whole square.
Layout is something similar to http://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/kakuro/
I wish I knew what to pick >.<
Personally I'd use QGraphicsView and handle the drawing myself.
It can draw rectangles, triangles, circles and text without much effort, and that's pretty much everything you need as far as I can see. You just need to add the objects to a QGraphicsScene and you get them on the screen. You can also interact with the objects (you can find which object you're pointing at etc.)