I'm working on a Qt project and I've noticed a persistent problem with some GUI forms. The form looks fine on KDE (bottom picture) and Windows , but when the app runs on anything GNOME3-based (like Unity or GNOME3 itself) some parts of the form are hidden from view. (Top picture, everything below the Sort Ascending radio button is cut off)
The problem seems to be with how Qt layouts handle large font sizes. If the user is using normal-sized system font (<= 10pt) everything works fine. If they are using larger fonts, the form is not large enough to accommodate everything. Other forms affected by this bug are merely crowded, but that isn't as serious as having vital controls out of bounds. The layout doesn't want to resize itself to take advantage of new space if I enlarge the dialog. Is there an easy way to make it do this or do I need to hard-code it? Originally the code prevented dialog resizing during runtime, but restoring that functionality didn't fix the bug. Even if the dialog can expand, the problem is the layout won't expand with it.
Up until now, I've made all affected forms oversized to compensate for this bug, but it looks strange to have the dialogs much bigger than they need to be on Windows and KDE systems where the font is the proper size. Is there a way to cause an affected dialog/layout to resize itself so everything fits properly at runtime? If so, how would the program detect it when parts of the GUI are out of bounds? I would prefer not to force a certain font size (some people may prefer large fonts due to vision problems).
Thanks in advance for help.
The fix for this is using a different approach when displaying forms. A more dynamic way as I'll describe. I've successfully used this approach on Windows with 96 and very high DPI modes (over 120).
1.
Query the OS and get the user's chosen font for a particular system item; say the font used for the window caption or system dialog boxes. Also you could allow the user to choose their font later if they desired. Use True Type fonts when doing this if possible.
2.
Using that font, construct a string object that you'll use for a label or edit control (I don't know what this is for QT, for Windows it is GetTextExtentPoint32) and pass it to a system function to determine the width and height of the string for your environment.
3.
Given the above value, place the control and dynamically resize the form with the padding all around the control as you like. For buttons you might always add a certain percentage of pixels above and below the button to taste.
4.
For graphical elements like Bitmaps and jpegs, again query the OS for the current DPI settings of the monitor and use larger, pre-made resources. Naturally, all text around theses elements will be dynamically placed on the fly.
Note that on Windows you'll need to mark your exe as high dpi aware using a manifest.
Related
I'm still trying to do some pretty basic stuff with qt, and it's been a struggle. I'm specifically targeting for Mac. My current problem is getting the forms to not suck.
The simple problem. Create a new MainWindow app. Go into the Qt Creator (open Forms -> mainwindow.ui).
Drag 3 labels into place. Then I dragged 2 Line Edits and for fun, a Dial, but that part probably doesn't matter.
Click the main window and then tell it to use Form Layout. Within Qt Creator if I resize the window, my various line edits expand to fill the available space, exactly like I want.
Run the app. All the line edit fields are a fixed length, very short (if I don't override their minimum width), and do NOT resize as I resize the window.
Three quarters of the reason to use Form Layout is for resizing capability.
I've tried clicking on the central widget before setting to Form Layout: no change in behavior.
I do get reasonable behavior if I use a grid layout, although I have to add a vertical spacer at the bottom or my dial resizes crazily as I play with the window size.
So... Am I just doing something wrong with Form Layout? Or does it not work well on Mac and I should use Grid Layout instead?
I really miss Motif's XmFormLayout. It took time to set all the constraints, but I could make my forms do exactly what I wanted. Ah, but so 1990s.
On the panel to the right where you can see the objects, click the centralWidget. In the property panel, scroll down until you get to the layout properties of the form layout. Set the layoutFieldGrowthPolicy to ExpandingFieldsGrow.
By default, the line edits are not growing to fill the available space on macOS because they are not supposed to. This is some sort of macOS UI guideline. QFormLayout follows the platform conventions by default.
It would also be nice if I can figure out how to NOT necessarily expand everything to full width. I have a few Line Edit widgets that I'd like to keep short. They're going to hold TCP port numbers.
For those, set the Horizontal Policy property (it's grouped inside the sizePolicy property group in the properties panel) of the affected line edits to something suitable. In this case, probably to Fixed, but look up the documentation first of what each setting does.
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 should design a dialog with size 640*480 ,which can be used on 800*600 resolution.
At present my dialog size is 411*292 ,look wise this itself looks good enough ,but actually I was
asked to design dialog with the size I mentioned above.I tried that also but that dialog is too biger
than my earlier dialog of 411*292 size.
while using in 800*600 resolution or my dialog seems to be bigger and not able to see some of my controls
This is size of my dialog,
IDD_DIALOG_MYPAGE DIALOGEX 0, 0, 411, 292
can anyone please let me know how to design a dialog with 640*480 (which should not be bigger).
And how can I make my application to fit to any resolution so that all the controls on the dialog should be visible.
Dialogs are scaled in Dialog Units and Dialog Units scale upon the current UI settings and depend upon the System font. So if the user selects a larger UI representation your Dialog will grow too.
Best advise 1 I could give: Size all you controls by youself. Pick a font you like. Set it to the Control, calculate the positions ofthe new controls and use SetWindowPos/MoveWindow.
Only in this case you have full Control.
You may also use a fixed font size in the Dialog resource, but alos this font scales upon the DPI untis selected for the Screen...
So best advise 2 I could give: Scale upon the DPI/UI Settings and Show the dialog n a size that the user wants too, thats what a normal dialog will do...
You're in for a world of pain. If I understand correctly, you're being asked to make a dialog that will always be 640*480 pixels. It seems like whoever is asking hasn't kept up with UI development since 1995. 'Pixels' are meaningless in 2014. First, the units in resource files are in 'DLUs', 'Dialog Length Units'. See e.g. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/02/17/74811.aspx and support.microsoft.com/kb/125681 for some starters on how to convert one to the other. However, with high DPI displays these methods are insufficient. Now it doesn't just depend on the size of the system font any more, but also on the settings the user has selected for how big to display 'things' on various monitors, whether to differentiate between monitors at all, etc. See for a start http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn469266%28v=vs.85%29.aspx . But beware, because there are updates to these API's - e.g. Win7, Win8 and Win8.1 all have new features in this regards.
All of this of course doesn't help you. It's not terribly hard to make a dialog that will fit on 640x480 and up; just make it as small as possible. But this part: "And how can I make my application to fit to any resolution so that all the controls on the dialog should be visible." is really difficult. Does 'any' mean 'also smaller than 640x480'? And does 'fit' mean that it should look 'native' also on higher resolutions? Should the dialog be resizable? You can either go with the simple and robust approach suggested by xMRi above, or you will have to ask whoever is writing your spec to be more clear about what they want, keeping in mind all the things I outlined above.
I'm developing a Qt application and it's currently in an internal beta test. One member of the company has Windows configured to display text larger than its normal size, which breaks my UI. The About page, for example, currently looks like this:
but under his settings, looks like this (note the clipped text):
Coming from a C#/Winforms background, I'm amazed that I can't seem to find some easily configurable label property such as Form.AutoSize that will automatically size the labels to fit their containing text. I've tried messing with sizePolicy, scaledContents, and a few other properties, but none seem to do this.
I've come across various threads (such as this one) which give instructions for scaling the text to the label, but I want to do the opposite - scale the label to the text to facilitate for those with enlarged text settings like my co-worker. Is there a straightforward way to do this?
There are at least three solutions to this problem.
Use layouts. Their contents are scaled according to the size of the window.
Make a code which is executed whenever window size is changed. In that code, you get the width of the longest text in the window (How?)(another way) and then set window wider than that.
Do the same as in solution #2, but execute the code only when the dialog is shown. After that, alter the window properties so that its size cannot be changed.
I have an MFC application. When running it on Windows 7 I realized that when changing the display percentage to meduium - 125%, I have a TextControl which is cut off (end of sentence doesn't appear.)
How can I fix this?
I could enlarge the size of the control on the dialog, but I'd rather do that via the code.
My application is localized and I woudn't want to change all the dialogs on every language.
In general, the issue is that absolute coordinates are being used for some sizing rather than relative. The framework will initially lay things out correctly in large DPI, it's then up to you to keep things straight through resizes.
You can use a layout framework like this one: Ultimate Toolbox Layout Manager, or you can roll your own.
Here's a common pattern I use:
Define a struct that captures ID, size, location, and layout behavior (anchor top|left|right|bottom) of a control
In the document constructor initialize an array of structs with your desired layout behavior
In OnInitDialog, capture the initial control positions, e.g. for controls set to anchor top left you need to grab the initial distance from the top and left of the parent.
In OnSize, reposition and resize each control according to its layout behavior.
I'm not exactly sure if it helps in your case but the ResizableLib works pretty well for me. You can also skip creating a library and just use the files in your project.
There is a separate article for CResizableDialog which explains in a few easy steps how to implement this for existing dialogs.