Which is preferred CTabCtrl vs. CPropertySheet in MFC? - c++

I don't know how to use both of them. So a sample code with pros and cons is perfect. Which one is preferred? Why?

Neither is preferred, they serve different purposes. If you want a dialog with several pages, use a CPropertySheet. If you need a dialog with several pages while part of the dialog remains fixed, use a CTabCtrl. A CTabCtrl can be used do everything a CPropertySheet can do, but since the CTabCtrl is more complex to use, it shouldn't be used unless you need its extra flexibility. A CPropertySheet can also be used as a wizard by setting a few flags.
The following is an example of using a CTabCtrl:
aCTabCtrl Example http://rabien.com/image/xcolordialog1.png
If this was a CPropertySheet, then it would not be possible to put the sample colors outside of the tabs. (And the buttons would have to be at the bottom)
Tutorial on CPropertySheet
Tutorial on CTabCtrl

Related

Common ui base for dialogs in Qt

In Qt widget application, I'd like to have a common base view for all my dialogs, so that I could inherit other classes from it.
This "base/common" view would contain initially a set of buttons at the bottom and a custom frame with data at the top. A place in the middle would be used by derived classes for placing view-specific contents. If the common dialog style changes in the future, changes will be applied in one class only.
Is there any way to use such approach in Qt, since ui files are processed with 'uic' to create classes? Ideally would be to not to lose the ability of using the gui designer, at least for the derived classes.
Any hints much appreciated.
You can make your "base view" as its own ui file with a big QFrame in the middle with nothing in it and name it contentsFrame. Then create your other widgets you want to place inside the empty contentsFrame in designer.
Now you have a couple options. You can have both open side by side in designer, click on your contents widget, select all, and drag everything to your contentsFrame. Then just hit save as and save it as a different widget. If you aren't afraid to leave designer for a tiny bit, you can add your contents widget to the base widget in code. Either way, make sure you are setting the layout for your contentsFrame or everything will look like garbage.

create a scrollbar in a submenu qt?

I have a map application and a submenu which has dynamically added objects (i.e. points on a map) added to the submenu, depending on the layer that is loaded. I have the ability to hide each individual objects (i.e. a point) by clicking on the corresponding submenu item. Is there any way to organize the submenu? When there are a lot of points (i.e. 100) the entire submenu takes up the screen. Can I add a scrollbar to a submenu? I looked in the documentation, but couldn't find anything that support this feature.
From this bug report I was able to find out that you could do the following:
submenu->setStyleSheet("QMenu { menu-scrollable: 1; }");
Works like a charm.
There is no such possibility as far as I know.
Maybe you shouldn't use a sub menu for this but prefer a menu entry that show a Point manager GUI of your own which would have a QListWidget displaying all your points items.
I'm aware that this solution will break a (big?) part of your code but I don't see anything else.
I think you may be able to get the effect you want by creating and using your own QStyle subclass (via QApplication::setStyle()), and overriding the styleHint virtual method to return 1 when the StyleHint parameter passed in is SH_Menu_Scrollable. At least, that works for me when I create large QMenu objects and show them as popup menus.... It may also work for QMenus attached to the menu bar, but I havent tried that.
Whilst it is possible by subclassing the QMenu class to create a custom widget and going from there you're better off looking at a better way to display that information. You'll save yourself time and it'll be much easier for your users to not have to scroll through a big list of items in a small area.

Making a game in Qt regarding GUI windows

I've been wanting to program a simple game with a simple GUI using Qt (Its will be a VERY simple game, nothing fancy). What I've been wondering is, how can I create multiple windows and display them when needed? For an example, a battle screen and an inventory screen. The user should only see one of them, but should be able to access the other one when needed. I was using stacked widget but I'm not sure if that's the proper way. Also, is it better to design the windows in the designer or to code them?
A StackWidget certainly would accomplish what you want to do. The reason why it is not always used for this kind of thing, is that it all the screens are pre-created at the beginning and always exist. This means it takes a little longer to initialize, and you are using more resources than you need at any one time
But as you are saying, if this is a simple game, then I don't see a big problem with it. Just as easily, you could also, create an empty layout and swap the inventory and game panels as needed.
Add my vote to everyone else suggesting to use the designer. It is so much easier to manipulate layouts, actions, and such using the designer then through code.
You can see the Designer manual here
So this is what I would suggest:
Create your "battleScreen.ui" - which is the designer file for your battle screen and everything in it, and then create your "inventory.ui". Both of these could be QWidgets, or QFrames, or whatever makes sense.
Then create your "Game.ui" which will be your QMainWindow.
In your Game main window, you can then add your QStackWidget, and place your inventory, and battle screens in the stack widget.
If you don't know how to do that...
1) drag a QWidget into your form (into the stack widget)
2) select the new QWidget and right-click.
3) Select "Promote to..."
4) Fill out the information to promote the QWidget to your inventory class
Promoted Class Name: The name of your inventory class
Header File: The header file of your inventory class
5) Click add
6) Click Promote.
Hope that helps.
Since I'm not sure what your goals are I can't advise whether or not the stacked widget is appropriate but I think you can accomplish quite a lot using the designer and style sheets. If you need to code some parts of the GUI, you can always drop in a place holder widget and either replace it with coded items or make them children of the place holders.
A general answer for a general question:
Use the Designer to create your windows; hide and show the auxiliary windows as needed.
Use a flow manager class to manage the visibility of a related set of windows.
The stacked widget is useful for managing a button/icon whose appearance changes based on state; the different representations live in the stack.

MFC: How to create options dialog with listbox and multiple pages?

Developing using Visual Studio 2010 C++ and MFC. I want to create an options (preferences/settings) dialog box that can display several options. After considering many different options dialog box UIs I think I like the listbox-with-multiple-pages-style similar to visual studio's option dialog box (but I don't need the treeview, a list box is fine).
What's a good way to implement this? Do I use a CListBox and then handle the selection event to load up the individual pages? I'm new to MFC, what would the individual pages even be? Something like a panel? Ideally I would design them in the resource editor and then be able to load them up.
Take a look at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/embedded_dialog.aspx for one possible way of doing this.
The individual property pages can be designed as dialogs in the resource editor, and then the relevant page can be displayed in your main dialog depending on the selection in the list box, by handling the LVN_ITEMCHANGED message.
See CPropertySheet and CPropertyPage classes. This allows you to easily manage a properties window with several views.

Qt: How to show icon when item selected

I have a QListWidget containing items which have icons and when the items are selected the icon is just highlighted out. Is there a way to prevent this? I can't use stylesheets because it's for an embedded application and including them takes up too much space.
thanks
I suppose when you say "Highlithed out", you mean that the icon colors don't render well when the line is selected, and therefore, you can't see properly the icon...
Maybe you could consider using a different icon when the item is selected. It's possible to do so by specifing a mode to your icon.
Example :
QIcon MyIcon(":/images/foo");
MyIcon.addFile(":/images/bar", QSize(...), QIcon::Selected);
You can easily make a try in QtDesigner and see the results...
Hope it helps a bit !
Certainly, drawing on a black-and-white screen presents its challenges.
It sounds like you just want to change the appearance of the interface, not any functionality. If this is the case, a QItemDelegate-derived class (or QStyledItemDelegate) is almost certainly what you want. In particular, the drawDecoration function looks like it is used to draw an icon, and the style options should include whether it is selected. The simplest fix would be to override that function, set the selected flag in the options to false, then pass it up to the parent's function.