SDL1.2, Window in another window - c++

I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 here and developing an SDL1.2 app in c++. What I would like to achieve is that the user could open like a "Preferences" window or something from the "Main" window (both window should have a titlebar etc). I'd also like to have this program be able to run cross-platform, and SDL2 is not an option, either.
Is this achievable in any way? What I could think of so far is writing another SDL program that will be called from inside the 'main' program, but that would include some system() calls, and anyways, it's not the best solution IMO.

SDL only supports a single window. If you upgrade to SDL2, it supports multiple windows, though you can't put one window inside of another window.
If you want this functionality without upgrading, you'll have to render the window-in-a-window yourself.

Related

Propper way to deinitialize GTK

I'm writing a c++ application that creates a GTK3 window at some point, while also running X11 code in other places.
For the pure X11 part i'm using XOpenDisplay() to open a display.
Running the X11 part and opening a GTK window afterwards works fine. Also running the X11 part multiple times is no problem as i release the display there using XCloseDisplay.
The problem i'm facing occurs when i try to run the X11 code after gtk has been initialized (to be more specific, calling XOpenDisplay() after the gtk initialization).
I'm suspecting that after running gtk_init() the display is never being released, even after gtk_main_quit().
I didn't find anything about deinitialization in the gtk3 documentation. Is there any way to propperly deinitialize gtk or free the display in another way?
The solution was completely unrelated. I was setting the DISPLAY environment variable twice by accident. Apparently gtk can handle this but XOpenDisplay crashes.
I have added a test to only set it once, now everything works. Perhaps gtk does propperly deinitialize after gtk_main_quit()

Mac override window maximize button c++

I am writing an application, and I want to change the default behavior of the Window Maximize button on Mac.
Since few latest versions of MacOS it defaults to putting the app in fullscreen mode, however it's not what I want.
I want the same behavior as in Windows OS.
I'm using C++.
Ideally what I want is to intercept some window function callback, disable entering fullscreen and instead just maximize the window to entire desktop working area.
How to do this?
Thanks
It's going to be difficult to help you since there's no native C++ binding for Cocoa. If you're programming using C++, you must be using some third-party library like Qt or SDL or something like that, but you neglect to tell us what that is.
Also, macOS doesn't have and never has had a "maximize" feature, let alone one like Windows. It has a zoom operation on windows, but that's not the same thing. It's simply an automated resize, it doesn't put the window into a mode where it's locked to the new size until it's restored.
Anyway, to achieve what you want, you should set the window's collectionBehavior property to include NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenNone and not NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenPrimary or NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenAuxiliary. So, in Objective-C(++):
window.collectionBehavior &= ~(NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenPrimary | NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenAuxiliary);
window.collectionBehavior |= NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenNone;
If your window is defined in a NIB, you can set its Full Screen behavior to None in the Attributes inspector.
Setting this for NSWindow did the trick:
self.collectionBehavior|=NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenNone;

How to create an Evernote kind of widget for global menu of a MacOS/X desktop using QT?

How to create an application which stays in top of MacOS, something similar to below image. You can see the Evernote elephant icon.
I don't want to use xcode - because my application already built in QT, it has nice GUI, now I wanted to add extended feature something similar to Evernote. If I click on an elephant it will open a dialog box to write notes. In my case- it's a simple event like on/off buttons.
I have tried and created GUI widget apps but how to make one which resides like Evernote app ?
A custom pop up menu like the one pictured can be done several ways in Qt.
QML is the most modern way of making the menu with the customized styling you are looking for.
Apply the appropriate flags to the window/widget so it appears as a popup.
The same effects can also be done in QWidgets, but takes more code and probably will take longer to make. The flags you are looking for will be found under Qt Window Flags and/or under Qt Widget Attributes.
The stock stylings for Qt for different OS's deal mostly with title bars, status bars, buttons, drop downs, etc.
The base styles for Mac can be found here:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/gallery-macintosh.html
Once you go to a customized popup, you have to draw all of it yourself... but the native drawing elements in Qt are friendly enough and get you that look you are trying to do.
There are even some tools for exporting from Photoshop or Gimp directly to QML.
http://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/quick-export-to-qml.html
Hope that helps.
You are looking for a tray icon. Qt implements it in QSystemTrayIcon.
Further information
You may take a look at the System Tray Icon Example.
Many StackOverflow posts exist on this topic.
If you already have a program written for Qt, then you can compile and run it under MacOS/X much the same way you could compile it under (whatever OS you're using now). You'll need to install Xcode because Xcode includes the C++ compiler (clang) you'll need in order to compile your Qt program, but you don't have to use the Xcode IDE if you don't want to. Rather, you can either use the QtCreator IDE under MacOS/X, or you can simply open up a Terminal window and do a "qmake ; make" in the directory where your Qt-based program's .pro file is, and build it from the command line that way.
If, on the other hand, your question is actually about how to add an icon to the global menu of a MacOS/X desktop, then I don't think Qt has an API for that, so you'll need to drop down to using one of MacOS/X's native APIs. That will probably involve learning some Objective-C (or Objective-C++, if you prefer), but integrating a bit of Objective-C/C++ into your Qt app is doable with a bit of work.

QT How to embed an application into QT widget

In our project we have three independent applications, and we have to develop a QT control application that controls these three applications. The main window will be seperated to three sub windows - each one display another one application.
I thought to use QX11EmbedWidget and QX11EmbedContainer widgets, but two problems with that:
The QX11Embed* is based on X11 protocol and I dont know if it's supported on non-x11 systems like Windows OS.
Since QT 5 these classes are not existing, and the QT documentation doesn't mention why.
So that I dont know whether to use it or not - I'll be happy to get an answers.
In addition, I see that the QT 5.1 contains QWidget::createWindowContainer(); function that in some posts it looks like this should be the replacement to the X11Embed. Can anyone please explian me more how can I use this function to create a QT widget that will run another application (a Calculator for example) inside its?
I have searched a lot in Google, and didn't find answers to my Qs.
Can anyone please help me? Am I on the right way?
Thanks!
If all three independent applications are written with Qt, and you have their source, you should be able to unify them just through the parenting of GUI objects in Qt.
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/objecttrees.html
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/widgets-and-layouts.html
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/mainwindows-mdi.html
If you don't have access to them in that way, what you are talking about is like 3rd party window management. It is kind of like writing a shell, like Windows Explorer, that manipulates the state and the size of other window applications.
Use a program like Spy++ or AutoIt Spy for Windows and the similar ones for other OS's, and learn the identifying markings of your windows you want to control, like the class, the window title, etc. Or you can launch the exe yourself in a QProcess::startDetached() sort of thing.
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.1/qtcore/qprocess.html#startDetached
Then using the OS dependent calls control the windows. The Qt library doesn't have this stuff built in for third party windows, only for ones under the QApplication that you launched. There are a lot of examples of doing things like this by AutoHotKey, or AHK. It is a scripting language that is made for automating a lot of things in the windows environment, and there is port for Mac as well (though I haven't tried the mac port myself).
So in the end you are looking at finding your window probably with a call like this:
#include <windows.h>
HWND hwnd_1 = ::FindWindow("Window_Class", "Window Name");
LONG retVal = GetWindowLongA(hwnd_1, GWL_STYLE); // to query the state of the window
Then manipulate the position and state of the window like so:
::MoveWindow(hwnd_1, x, y, width, height, TRUE);
::ShowWindow(hwnd_1, SW_SHOWMAXIMIZED);
You can even draw widgets on top of the windows you are controlling if you set your window flags correctly for the windows you are manipulating.
transparent QLabel with a pixmap
Cannot get QSystemTrayIcon to work correctly with activation reason
Some gotchas that come up in Windows when doing all of this, is finding out the quirks of the Windows UI when they set the Display scaling different from what you expect, and if you want to play nice with the Task bar, and handling all the modal windows of your programs you are manipulating.
So overall, it is do-able. Qt will make a nice interface for performing these commands, but in the end you are looking at a lot of work and debugging to get it in a beautiful, reliable, window manager.
Hope that helps.
I never tried it myself, but from the docs in Qt 5.1 I would try QWindow::fromId(WId id), which gives you a QWindow, which should be embeddable with createWindowContainer:
QWindow * QWindow::fromWinId(WId id) [static] Creates a local
representation of a window created by another process or by using
native libraries below Qt.
Given the handle id to a native window, this method creates a QWindow
object which can be used to represent the window when invoking methods
like setParent() and setTransientParent(). This can be used, on
platforms which support it, to embed a window inside a container or to
make a window stick on top of a window created by another process.
But no guarantee. :-)

Terminal to open a popup window in C++

My c++ application needs to display a message via a popup window or an alternative. My application is running on Ubuntu 12.04 version. Can I program the application to open a Ubuntu type popup window? If possible, how?
Do I need to use gnome window or something like that?
The simplest way to display a popup from a program that doesn't otherwise use a GUI, is probably just execute a command-line tool that does the work:
to display a notification with no buttons, you can use notify-send
system("/usr/bin/notify-send MessageSubject \"message body here\"");
if you want buttons so the user can give a response, you could use the (much uglier) xmessage
system("/usr/bin/xmessage")
(see each tool's manpage for all their options)
The alternative is really to use a full GUI framework (probably gtk+), and that's not typically a small change.
For example, you can use libnotify directly (giving you the same basic capabilities as notify-send, but more control), but this also depends on glib. So, now you've added two external dependencies when you could just have run system.
In order to display the popup or any kind of window, you will have to reference either gtk+ or qt libraries in your application/program. gtk+ is advisable, since the ubuntu unity desktop is also based on gtk+ - this way your program will have lesser overhead and more performance gain while running on ubuntu. You can either use the default C library (libgtk2.0) or the gtkmm (libgtkmm) for C++.
You can get more information on how to refer these libraries, initialize gtk_main in your main() function, etc. at this place: http://www.gtk.org/documentation.php