Does Qt support interaction with the native menu bar of an arbitrary window (i. e. QWidget) on Windows and Linux?
It looks like Qt treats the menu as just another child widget to be placed on the parent window. That is, to have a menu bar , I must reserve some space for it in the window's client area. That makes no sense on Mac, with its menu on the top of the screen. On Windows, it makes little sense - the menu, as implemented by the system, is outside of the client area. Not sure what's the native model on Linux.
Qt supports native menues on Mac and on Windows. It may seem when looking at the forms in Qt Designer, that Qt menues on Mac are non-standard, but they aren't. Qt had made a great deal to deal with menue differences between the supported platforms and they work very well.
Related
I would like to allow the user to insert a selected text from any source or application into my Qt application using the middle mouse button.
This functionality is already available with the help of the QCliboard class on operating systems with X11 Window System. According to the Qt documentation, this does not work on Windows because Windows does not support the global mouse selection.
Is there a way to make this functionality available in Windows as well? Can this be achieved with a Qt and C++ implementation? Is there possibly a C++ library that I could integrate which offers this functionality?
I want to save the focused window's title, i made this part but i dont know is there any QEvent which catches all (non-application) focusChanged event? Like switching from Chrome to Qt Creator. I made an alternative solution that checks in every second if the topmost window title has changed but this is so rude. I need cross-platform solution if possible.
EDIT
I am using QT 5.9.0
Quick answer:
Qt only has focus events for it's own windows and widgets. See http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qfocusevent.html#details for start point.
There is no event for focus in other applications.
Details:
For multi-platform solution is needed to have more general point of view. On some (X window) systems where keyboard focus is in window under mouse. But that window becomes topmost only after click. On Mobile platforms there is only one active application. And application is not allowed seeing when other applications are activated. So in my understanding there is no full multi-platform solution.
Windows only extensions are in the Qt Windows Extras. http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwinextras-overview.html. But there is nothing focus change related unfortunately.
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.
I have an application that on its main window, has a typical Menu bar, with File, Edit,, View, Tools, Help... with custom submenus. The menu bar is part of the form created using QtCreator, in design view.
I am trying to port this application to Mac OSX - I am a beginner in all things Mac, but I noticed that the typical apps have their menu on the main Mac window. And... it became a requirement, if I can, to move the app menu bar to the higher level menu...
I don't eve know how to begin, searching typical keywords did not yield anything useful.
I imagine that there is some type of object I can access and set, in case my os is MACX ?
Are there any examples, or documentation, on setting the top menu in Mac ?
using Qt 4.8... c++... the Mac I have to build on has 10.6.8 on it
According to this page, Qt should translate your menu bar into a native OS X menu bar automatically, or with little work (though that doc is for 5.3). Have you tried doing this stuff already? If so, what problems are you running into specifically?
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. :-)