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All properties set in \QD can be changed dynamically within the code. Furthermore, features like widget promotion and custom plugins allow you to use your own components with \QD. If you are new to \QD, you can take a look at the \l{Getting To Know Qt Designer} document. For a quick tutorial on how to use \QD, refer to \l{A Quick Start to Qt Designer}. Qt Designer 4.5 boasts a long list of improvements. For a detailed list of what is new, refer \l{What's New in Qt Designer 4.5}. \image designer-multiple-screenshot.png For more information on using \QD, you can take a look at the following links: \list \o \l{Qt Designer's Editing Modes} \list \o \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode}{Widget Editing Mode} \o \l{Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode} {Signals and Slots Editing Mode} \o \l{Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode} {Buddy Editing Mode} \o \l{Qt Designer's Tab Order Editing Mode} {Tab Order Editing Mode} \endlist \o \l{Using Layouts in Qt Designer} \o \l{Saving, Previewing and Printing Forms in Qt Designer} \o \l{Using Containers in Qt Designer} \o \l{Creating Main Windows in Qt Designer} \o \l{Editing Resources with Qt Designer} \o \l{Using Stylesheets with Qt Designer} \o \l{Using a Designer UI File in Your Application} \endlist For advanced usage of \QD, you can refer to these links: \list \o \l{Customizing Qt Designer Forms} \o \l{Using Custom Widgets with Qt Designer} \o \l{Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer} \o \l{Creating Custom Widget Extensions} \o \l{Qt Designer's UI File Format} \endlist \section1 Legal Notices Some source code in \QD is licensed under specific highly permissive licenses from the original authors. The Qt team gratefully acknowledges these contributions to \QD and all uses of \QD should also acknowledge these contributions and quote the following license statements in an appendix to the documentation. \list \i \l{Implementation of the Recursive Shadow Casting Algorithm in Qt Designer} \endlist */ /*! \page designer-whats-new.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \title What's New in Qt Designer 4.5 \section1 General Changes \table \header \i Widget Filter Box \i Widget Morphing \i Disambiguation Field \row \i \inlineimage designer-widget-filter.png \i \inlineimage designer-widget-morph.png \i \inlineimage designer-disambiguation.png \endtable \list 1 \i Displaying only icons in the \gui{Widget Box}: It is now possible for the \gui{Widget Box} to display icons only. Simply select \gui{Icon View} from the context menu. \i Filter for \gui{Widget Box}: A filter is now provided to quickly locate the widget you need. If you use a particular widget frequently, you can always add it to the \l{Getting to Know Qt Designer#WidgetBox}{scratch pad}. \i Support for QButtonGroup: It is available via the context menu of a selection of QAbstractButton objects. \i Improved support for item widgets: The item widgets' (e.g., QListWidget, QTableWidget, and QTreeWidget) contents dialogs have been improved. You can now add translation comments and also modify the header properties. \i Widget morphing: A widget can now be morphed from one type to another with its layout and properties preserved. To begin, click on your widget and select \gui{Morph into} from the context menu. \i Disambiguation field: The property editor now shows this extra field under the \gui{accessibleDescription} property. This field has been introduced to aid translators in the case of two source texts being the same but used for different purposes. For example, a dialog could have two \gui{Add} buttons for two different reasons. \note To maintain compatibility, comments in UI files created prior to Qt 4.5 will be listed in the \gui{Disambiguation} field. \endlist \section1 Improved Shortcuts for the Editing Mode \list \i The \key{Shift+Click} key combination now selects the ancestor for nested layouts. This iterates from one ancestor to the other. \i The \key{Ctrl} key is now used to toggle and copy drag. Previously this was done with the \key{Shift} key but is now changed to conform to standards. \i The left mouse button does rubber band selection for form windows; the middle mouse button does rubber band selection everywhere. \endlist \section1 Layouts \list \i It is now possible to switch a widget's layout without breaking it first. Simply select the existing layout and change it to another type using the context menu or the layout buttons on the toolbar. \i To quickly populate a \gui{Form Layout}, you can now use the \gui{Add form layout row...} item available in the context menu or double-click on the red layout. \endlist \section1 Support for Embedded Design \table \header \i Comboboxes to Select a Device Profile \row \i \inlineimage designer-embedded-preview.png \endtable It is now possible to specify embedded device profiles, e.g., Style, Font, Screen DPI, resolution, default font, etc., in \gui{Preferences}. These settings will affect the \gui{Form Editor}. The profiles will also be visible with \gui{Preview}. \section1 Related Classes \list \i QUiLoader \mdash forms loaded with this class will now react to QEvent::LanguageChange if QUiLoader::setLanguageChangeEnabled() or QUiLoader::isLanguageChangeEnabled() is set to true. \i QDesignerCustomWidgetInterface \mdash the \l{QDesignerCustomWidgetInterface::}{domXml()} function now has new attributes for its \c{} element. These attributes are \c{language} and \c{displayname}. The \c{language} element can be one of the following "", "c++", "jambi". If this element is specified, it must match the language in which Designer is running. Otherwise, this element will not be available. The \c{displayname} element represents the name that will be displayed in the \gui{Widget Box}. Previously this was hardcoded to be the class name. \i QWizard \mdash QWizard's page now has a string \c{id} attribute that can be used to fill in enumeration values to be used by the \c{uic}. However, this attribute has no effect on QUiLoader. \endlist */ /*! \page designer-to-know.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \title Getting to Know Qt Designer \tableofcontents \image designer-screenshot.png \section1 Launching Designer The way that you launch \QD depends on your platform: \list \i On Windows, click the Start button, under the \gui Programs submenu, open the \gui{Qt 4} submenu and click \gui Designer. \i On Unix or Linux, you might find a \QD icon on the desktop background or in the desktop start menu under the \gui Programming or \gui Development submenus. You can launch \QD from this icon. Alternatively, you can type \c{designer} in a terminal window. \i On Mac OS X, double click on \QD in \gui Finder. \endlist \section1 The User Interface When used as a standalone application, \QD's user interface can be configured to provide either a multi-window user interface (the default mode), or it can be used in docked window mode. When used from within an integrated development environment (IDE) only the multi-window user interface is available. You can switch modes in the \gui Preferences dialog from the \gui Edit menu. In multi-window mode, you can arrange each of the tool windows to suit your working style. The main window consists of a menu bar, a tool bar, and a widget box that contains the widgets you can use to create your user interface. \target MainWindow \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-main-window.png \i \bold{Qt Designer's Main Window} The menu bar provides all the standard actions for managing forms, using the clipboard, and accessing application-specific help. The current editing mode, the tool windows, and the forms in use can also be accessed via the menu bar. The tool bar displays common actions that are used when editing a form. These are also available via the main menu. The widget box provides common widgets and layouts that are used to design components. These are grouped into categories that reflect their uses or features. \endtable Most features of \QD are accessible via the menu bar, the tool bar, or the widget box. Some features are also available through context menus that can be opened over the form windows. On most platforms, the right mouse is used to open context menus. \target WidgetBox \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-widget-box.png \i \bold{Qt Designer's Widget Box} The widget box provides a selection of standard Qt widgets, layouts, and other objects that can be used to create user interfaces on forms. Each of the categories in the widget box contain widgets with similar uses or related features. \note Since Qt 4.4, new widgets have been included, e.g., QPlainTextEdit, QCommandLinkButton, QScrollArea, QMdiArea, and QWebView. You can display all of the available objects in a category by clicking on the handle next to the category label. When in \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode}{Widget Editing Mode}, you can add objects to a form by dragging the appropriate items from the widget box onto the form, and dropping them in the required locations. \QD provides a scratch pad feature that allows you to collect frequently used objects in a separate category. The scratch pad category can be filled with any widget currently displayed in a form by dragging them from the form and dropping them onto the widget box. These widgets can be used in the same way as any other widgets, but they can also contain child widgets. Open a context menu over a widget to change its name or remove it from the scratch pad. \endtable \section1 The Concept of Layouts in Qt A layout is used to arrange and manage the elements that make up a user interface. Qt provides a number of classes to automatically handle layouts -- QHBoxLayout, QVBoxLayout, QGridLayout, and QFormLayout. These classes solve the challenge of laying out widgets automatically, providing a user interface that behaves predictably. Fortunately knowledge of the layout classes is not required to arrange widgets with \QD. Instead, select one of the \gui{Lay Out Horizontally}, \gui{Lay Out in a Grid}, etc., options from the context menu. Each Qt widget has a recommended size, known as \l{QWidget::}{sizeHint()}. The layout manager will attempt to resize a widget to meet its size hint. In some cases, there is no need to have a different size. For example, the height of a QLineEdit is always a fixed value, depending on font size and style. In other cases, you may require the size to change, e.g., the width of a QLineEdit or the width and height of item view widgets. This is where the widget size constraints -- \l{QWidget::minimumSize()}{minimumSize} and \l{QWidget::maximumSize()}{maximumSize} constraints come into play. These are properties you can set in the property editor. For example, to override the default \l{QWidget::}{sizeHint()}, simply set \l{QWidget::minimumSize()}{minimumSize} and \l{QWidget::maximumSize()} {maximumSize} to the same value. Alternatively, to use the current size as a size constraint value, choose one of the \gui{Size Constraint} options from the widget's context menu. The layout will then ensure that those constraints are met. To control the size of your widgets via code, you can reimplement \l{QWidget::}{sizeHint()} in your code. The screenshot below shows the breakdown of a basic user interface designed using a grid. The coordinates on the screenshot show the position of each widget within the grid. \image addressbook-tutorial-part3-labeled-layout.png \note Inside the grid, the QPushButton objects are actually nested. The buttons on the right are first placed in a QVBoxLayout; the buttons at the bottom are first placed in a QHBoxLayout. Finally, they are put into coordinates (1,2) and (3,1) of the QGridLayout. To visualize, imagine the layout as a box that shrinks as much as possible, attempting to \e squeeze your widgets in a neat arrangement, and, at the same time, maximize the use of available space. Qt's layouts help when you: \list 1 \i Resize the user face to fit different window sizes. \i Resize elements within the user interface to suit different localizations. \i Arrange elements to adhere to layout guidelines for different platforms. \endlist So, you no longer have to worry about rearranging widgets for different platforms, settings, and languages. The example below shows how different localizations can affect the user interface. When a localization requires more space for longer text strings the Qt layout automatically scales to accommodate this, while ensuring that the user interface looks presentable and still matches the platform guidelines. \table \header \i A Dialog in English \i A Dialog in French \row \i \image designer-english-dialog.png \i \image designer-french-dialog.png \endtable The process of laying out widgets consists of creating the layout hierarchy while setting as few widget size constraints as possible. For a more technical perspective on Qt's layout classes, refer to the \l{Layout Management} documentation. */ /*! \page designer-quick-start.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \title A Quick Start to Qt Designer Using \QD involves \bold four basic steps: \list 1 \o Choose your form and objects \o Lay the objects out on the form \o Connect the signals to the slots \o Preview the form \endlist \image rgbController-screenshot.png Suppose you would like to design a small widget (see screenshot above) that contains the controls needed to manipulate Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values -- a type of widget that can be seen everywhere in image manipulation programs. \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-choosing-form.png \i \bold{Choosing a Form} You start by choosing \gui Widget from the \gui{New Form} dialog. \endtable \table \row \i \inlineimage rgbController-arrangement.png \i \bold{Placing Widgets on a Form} Drag three labels, three spin boxes and three vertical sliders on to your form. To change the label's default text, simply double-click on it. You can arrange them according to how you would like them to be laid out. \endtable To ensure that they are laid out exactly like this in your program, you need to place these widgets into a layout. We will do this in groups of three. Select the "RED" label. Then, hold down \key Ctrl while you select its corresponding spin box and slider. In the \gui{Form} menu, select \gui{Lay Out in a Grid}. \table \row \i \inlineimage rgbController-form-gridLayout.png \i \inlineimage rgbController-selectForLayout.png \endtable Repeat the step for the other two labels along with their corresponding spin boxes and sliders as well. The next step is to combine all three layouts into one \bold{main layout}. The main layout is the top level widget's (in this case, the QWidget) layout. It is important that your top level widget has a layout; otherwise, the widgets on your window will not resize when your window is resized. To set the layout, \gui{Right click} anywhere on your form, outside of the three separate layouts, and select \gui{Lay Out Horizontally}. Alternatively, you could also select \gui{Lay Out in a Grid} -- you will still see the same arrangement (shown below). \image rgbController-final-layout.png \note Main layouts cannot be seen on the form. To check if you have a main layout installed, try resizing your form; your widgets should resize accordingly. Alternatively, you can take a look at \QD's \gui{Object Inspector}. If your top level widget does not have a layout, you will see the broken layout icon next to it, \inlineimage rgbController-no-toplevel-layout.png . When you click on the slider and drag it to a certain value, you want the spin box to display the slider's position. To accomplish this behavior, you need to connect the slider's \l{QAbstractSlider::}{valueChanged()} signal to the spin box's \l{QSpinBox::}{setValue()} slot. You also need to make the reverse connections, e.g., connect the spin box's \l{QSpinBox::} {valueChanged()} signal to the slider's \l{QAbstractSlider::value()} {setValue()} slot. To do this, you have to switch to \gui{Edit Signals/Slots} mode, either by pressing \key{F4} or something \gui{Edit Signals/Slots} from the \gui{Edit} menu. \table \row \i \inlineimage rgbController-signalsAndSlots.png \i \bold{Connecting Signals to Slots} Click on the slider and drag the cursor towards the spin box. The \gui{Configure Connection} dialog, shown below, will pop up. Select the correct signal and slot and click \gui OK. \endtable \image rgbController-configure-connection1.png Repeat the step (in reverse order), clicking on the spin box and dragging the cursor towards the slider, to connect the spin box's \l{QSpinBox::}{valueChanged()} signal to the slider's \l{QAbstractSlider::value()}{setValue()} slot. You can use the screenshot below as a guide to selecting the correct signal and slot. \image rgbController-configure-connection2.png Now that you have successfully connected the objects for the "RED" component of the RGB Controller, do the same for the "GREEN" and "BLUE" components as well. Since RGB values range between 0 and 255, we need to limit the spin box and slider to that particular range. \table \row \i \inlineimage rgbController-property-editing.png \i \bold{Setting Widget Properties} Click on the first spin box. Within the \gui{Property Editor}, you will see \l{QSpinBox}'s properties. Enter "255" for the \l{QSpinBox::}{maximum} property. Then, click on the first vertical slider, you will see \l{QAbstractSlider}'s properties. Enter "255" for the \l{QAbstractSlider::}{maximum} property as well. Repeat this process for the remaining spin boxes and sliders. \endtable Now, we preview your form to see how it would look in your application - press \key{Ctrl + R} or select \gui Preview from the \gui Form menu. Try dragging the slider - the spin box will mirror its value too (and vice versa). Also, you can resize it to see how the layouts that are used to manage the child widgets, respond to different window sizes. */ /*! \page designer-editing-mode.html \previouspage Getting to Know Qt Designer \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \nextpage Using Layouts in Qt Designer \title Qt Designer's Editing Modes \QD provides four editing modes: \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode} {Widget Editing Mode}, \l{Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode} {Signals and Slots Editing Mode}, \l{Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode} {Buddy Editing Mode} and \l{Qt Designer's Tab Order Editing Mode} {Tab Order Editing Mode}. When working with \QD, you will always be in one of these four modes. To switch between modes, simply select it from the \gui{Edit} menu or the toolbar. The table below describes these modes in further detail. \table \header \i \i \bold{Editing Modes} \row \i \inlineimage designer-widget-tool.png \i In \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode}{Edit} mode, we can change the appearance of the form, add layouts, and edit the properties of each widget. To switch to this mode, press \key{F3}. This is \QD's default mode. \row \i \inlineimage designer-connection-tool.png \i In \l{Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode} {Signals and Slots} mode, we can connect widgets together using Qt's signals and slots mechanism. To switch to this mode, press \key{F4}. \row \i \inlineimage designer-buddy-tool.png \i In \l{Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode}{Buddy Editing Mode}, buddy widgets can be assigned to label widgets to help them handle keyboard focus correctly. \row \i \inlineimage designer-tab-order-tool.png \i In \l{Qt Designer's Tab Order Editing Mode} {Tab Order Editing Mode}, we can set the order in which widgets receive the keyboard focus. \endtable */ /*! \page designer-widget-mode.html \previouspage Qt Designer's Editing Modes \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \nextpage Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode \title Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode \image designer-editing-mode.png In the Widget Editing Mode, objects can be dragged from the main window's widget box to a form, edited, resized, dragged around on the form, and even dragged between forms. Object properties can be modified interactively, so that changes can be seen immediately. The editing interface is intuitive for simple operations, yet it still supports Qt's powerful layout facilities. \tableofcontents To create and edit new forms, open the \gui File menu and select \gui{New Form...} or press \key{Ctrl+N}. Existing forms can also be edited by selecting \gui{Open Form...} from the \gui File menu or pressing \key{Ctrl+O}. At any point, you can save your form by selecting the \gui{Save From As...} option from the \gui File menu. The UI files saved by \QD contain information about the objects used, and any details of signal and slot connections between them. \section1 Editing A Form By default, new forms are opened in widget editing mode. To switch to Edit mode from another mode, select \gui{Edit Widgets} from the \gui Edit menu or press the \key F3 key. Objects are added to the form by dragging them from the main widget box and dropping them in the desired location on the form. Once there, they can be moved around simply by dragging them, or using the cursor keys. Pressing the \key Ctrl key at the same time moves the selected widget pixel by pixel, while using the cursor keys alone make the selected widget snap to the grid when it is moved. Objects can be selected by clicking on them with the left mouse button. You can also use the \key Tab key to change the selection. ### Screenshot of widget box, again The widget box contains objects in a number of different categories, all of which can be placed on the form as required. The only objects that require a little more preparation are the \gui Container widgets. These are described in further detail in the \l{Using Containers in Qt Designer} chapter. \target SelectingObjects \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-selecting-widget.png \i \bold{Selecting Objects} Objects on the form are selected by clicking on them with the left mouse button. When an object is selected, resize handles are shown at each corner and the midpoint of each side, indicating that it can be resized. To select additional objects, hold down the \key Shift key and click on them. If more than one object is selected, the current object will be displayed with resize handles of a different color. To move a widget within a layout, hold down \key Shift and \key Control while dragging the widget. This extends the selection to the widget's parent layout. Alternatively, objects can be selected in the \l{The Object Inspector}{Object Inspector}. \endtable When a widget is selected, normal clipboard operations such as cut, copy, and paste can be performed on it. All of these operations can be done and undone, as necessary. The following shortcuts can be used: \target ShortcutsForEditing \table \header \i Action \i Shortcut \i Description \row \i Cut \i \key{Ctrl+X} \i Cuts the selected objects to the clipboard. \row \i Copy \i \key{Ctrl+C} \i Copies the selected objects to the clipboard. \row \i Paste \i \key{Ctrl+V} \i Pastes the objects in the clipboard onto the form. \row \i Delete \i \key Delete \i Deletes the selected objects. \row \i Clone object \i \key{Ctrl+drag} (leftmouse button) \i Makes a copy of the selected object or group of objects. \row \i Preview \i \key{Ctrl+R} \i Shows a preview of the form. \endtable All of the above actions (apart from cloning) can be accessed via both the \gui Edit menu and the form's context menu. These menus also provide funcitons for laying out objects as well as a \gui{Select All} function to select all the objects on the form. Widgets are not unique objects; you can make as many copies of them as you need. To quickly duplicate a widget, you can clone it by holding down the \key Ctrl key and dragging it. This allows widgets to be copied and placed on the form more quickly than with clipboard operations. \target DragAndDrop \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-dragging-onto-form.png \i \bold{Drag and Drop} \QD makes extensive use of the drag and drop facilities provided by Qt. Widgets can be dragged from the widget box and dropped onto the form. Widgets can also be "cloned" on the form: Holding down \key Ctrl and dragging the widget creates a copy of the widget that can be dragged to a new position. It is also possible to drop Widgets onto the \l {The Object Inspector} {Object Inspector} to handle nested layouts easily. \endtable \QD allows selections of objects to be copied, pasted, and dragged between forms. You can use this feature to create more than one copy of the same form, and experiment with different layouts in each of them. \section2 The Property Editor The Property Editor always displays properties of the currently selected object on the form. The available properties depend on the object being edited, but all of the widgets provided have common properties such as \l{QObject::}{objectName}, the object's internal name, and \l{QWidget::}{enabled}, the property that determines whether an object can be interacted with or not. \target EditingProperties \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-property-editor.png \i \bold{Editing Properties} The property editor uses standard Qt input widgets to manage the properties of jbects on the form. Textual properties are shown in line edits, integer properties are displayed in spinboxes, boolean properties are displayed in check boxes, and compound properties such as colors and sizes are presented in drop-down lists of input widgets. Modified properties are indicated with bold labels. To reset them, click the arrow button on the right. Changes in properties are applied to all selected objects that have the same property. \endtable Certain properties are treated specially by the property editor: \list \o Compound properties -- properties that are made up of more than one value -- are represented as nodes that can be expanded, allowing their values to be edited. \o Properties that contain a choice or selection of flags are edited via combo boxes with checkable items. \o Properties that allow access to rich data types, such as QPalette, are modified using dialogs that open when the properties are edited. QLabel and the widgets in the \gui Buttons section of the widget box have a \c text property that can also be edited by double-clicking on the widget or by pressing \gui F2. \QD interprets the backslash (\\) character specially, enabling newline (\\n) characters to be inserted into the text; the \\\\ character sequence is used to insert a single backslash into the text. A context menu can also be opened while editing, providing another way to insert special characters and newlines into the text. \endlist \section2 Dynamic Properties The property editor can also be used to add new \l{QObject#Dynamic Properties}{dynamic properties} to both standard Qt widgets and to forms themselves. Since Qt 4.4, dynamic properties are added and removed via the property editor's toolbar, shown below. \image designer-property-editor-toolbar.png To add a dynamic property, clcik on the \gui Add button \inlineimage designer-property-editor-add-dynamic.png . To remove it, click on the \gui Remove button \inlineimage designer-property-editor-remove-dynamic.png instead. You can also sort the properties alphabetically and change the color groups by clickinig on the \gui Configure button \inlineimage designer-property-editor-configure.png . \section2 The Object Inspector \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-object-inspector.png \i \bold{The Object Inspector} The \gui{Object Inspector} displays a hierarchical list of all the objects on the form that is currently being edited. To show the child objects of a container widget or a layout, click the handle next to the object label. Each object on a form can be selected by clicking on the corresponding item in the \gui{Object Inspector}. Right-clicking opens the form's context menu. These features can be useful if you have many overlapping objects. To locate an object in the \gui{Object Inspector}, use \key{Ctrl+F}. Since Qt 4.4, double-clicking on the object's name allows you to change the object's name with the in-place editor. Since Qt 4.5, the \gui{Object Inspector} displays the layout state of the containers. The broken layout icon ###ICON is displayed if there is something wrong with the layouts. \endtable */ /*! \page designer-layouts.html \previouspage Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode \contentspage \nextpage Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode \title Using Layouts in Qt Designer Before a form can be used, the objects on the form need to be placed into layouts. This ensures that the objects will be displayed properly when the form is previewed or used in an application. Placing objects in a layout also ensures that they will be resized correctly when the form is resized. \tableofcontents \section1 Applying and Breaking Layouts The simplest way to manage objects is to apply a layout to a group of existing objects. This is achieved by selecting the objects that you need to manage and applying one of the standard layouts using the main toolbar, the \gui Form menu, or the form's context menu. Once widgets have been inserted into a layout, it is not possible to move and resize them individually because the layout itself controls the geometry of each widget within it, taking account of the hints provided by spacers. Instead, you must either break the layout and adjust each object's geometry manually, or you can influence the widget's geometry by resizing the layout. To break the layout, press \key{Ctrl+0} or choose \gui{Break Layout} from the form's context menu, the \gui Form menu or the main toolbar. You can also add and remove spacers from the layout to influence the geometries of the widgets. \target InsertingObjectsIntoALayout \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-layout-inserting.png \i \bold{Inserting Objects into a Layout} Objects can be inserted into an existing layout by dragging them from their current positions and dropping them at the required location. A blue cursor is displayed in the layout as an object is dragged over it to indicate where the object will be added. \endtable \section2 Setting A Top Level Layout The form's top level layout can be set by clearing the slection (click the left mouse button on the form itself) and applying a layout. A top level layout is necessary to ensure that your widgets will resize correctly when its window is resized. To check if you have set a top level layout, preview your widget and attempt to resize the window by dragging the size grip. \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-set-layout.png \i \bold{Applying a Layout} To apply a layout, you can select your choice of layout from the toolbar shown on the left, or from the context menu shown below. \endtable \image designer-set-layout2.png \section2 Horizontal and Vertical Layouts The simplest way to arrange objects on a form is to place them in a horizontal or vertical layout. Horizontal layouts ensure that the widgets within are aligned horizontally; vertical layouts ensure that they are aligned vertically. Horizontal and vertical layouts can be combined and nested to any depth. However, if you need more control over the placement of objects, consider using the grid layout. \section3 The Grid Layout Complex form layouts can be created by placing objects in a grid layout. This kind of layout gives the form designer much more freedom to arrange widgets on the form, but can result in a much less flexible layout. However, for some kinds of form layout, a grid arrangement is much more suitable than a nested arrangement of horizontal and vertical layouts. \section3 Splitter Layouts Another common way to manage the layout of objects on a form is to place them in a splitter. These splitters arrange the objects horizontally or vertically in the same way as normal layouts, but also allow the user to adjust the amount of space allocated to each object. \image designer-splitter-layout.png Although QSplitter is a container widget, \QD treats splitter objects as layouts that are applied to existing widgets. To place a group of widgets into a splitter, select them \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode#SelectingObjects}{as described here} then apply the splitter layout by using the appropriate toolbar button, keyboard shortcut, or \gui{Lay out} context menu entry. \section3 The Form Layout Since Qt 4.4, another layout class has been included -- QFormLayout. This class manages widgets in a two-column form; the left column holds labels and the right column holds field widgets such as line edits, spin boxes, etc. The QFormLayout class adheres to various platform look and feel guidelines and supports wrapping for long rows. \image designer-form-layout.png The UI file above results in the previews shown below. \table \header \i Windows XP \i Mac OS X \i Cleanlooks \row \i \inlineimage designer-form-layout-windowsXP.png \i \inlineimage designer-form-layout-macintosh.png \i \inlineimage designer-form-layout-cleanlooks.png \endtable \section2 Shortcut Keys In addition to the standard toolbar and context menu entries, there is also a set of keyboard shortcuts to apply layouts on widgets. \target LayoutShortcuts \table \header \i Layout \i Shortcut \i Description \row \i Horizontal \i \key{Ctrl+1} \i Places the selected objects in a horizontal layout. \row \i Vertical \i \key{Ctrl+2} \i Places the selected objects in a vertical layout. \row \i Grid \i \key{Ctrl+5} \i Places the selected objects in a grid layout. \row \i Form \i \key{Ctrl+6} \i Places the selected objects in a form layout. \row \i Horizontal splitter \i \key{Ctrl+3} \i Creates a horizontal splitter and places the selected objects inside it. \row \i Vertical splitter \i \key{Ctrl+4} \i Creates a vertical splitter and places the selected objects inside it. \row \i Adjust size \i \key{Ctrl+J} \i Adjusts the size of the layout to ensure that each child object has sufficient space to display its contents. See QWidget::adjustSize() for more information. \endtable \note \key{Ctrl+0} is used to break a layout. */ /*! \page designer-preview.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Using Layouts in Qt Designer \nextpage Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode \title Saving, Previewing and Printing Forms in Qt Designer Although \QD's forms are accurate representations of the components being edited, it is useful to preview the final appearance while editing. This feature can be activated by opening the \gui Form menu and selecting \gui Preview, or by pressing \key{Ctrl+R} when in the form. \image designer-dialog-preview.png The preview shows exactly what the final component will look like when used in an application. Since Qt 4.4, it is possible to preview forms with various skins - default skins, skins created with Qt Style Sheets or device skins. This feature simulates the effect of calling \c{QApplication::setStyleSheet()} in the application. To preview your form with skins, open the \gui Edit menu and select \gui{Preferences...} You will see the dialog shown below: \image designer-preview-style.png The \gui{Print/Preview Configuration} checkbox must be checked to activate previews of skins. You can select the styles provided from the \gui{Style} drop-down box. \image designer-preview-style-selection.png Alternatively, you can preview custom style sheet created with Qt Style Sheets. The figure below shows an example of Qt Style Sheet syntax and the corresponding output. \image designer-preview-stylesheet.png Another option would be to preview your form with device skins. A list of generic device skins are available in \QD, however, you may also use other QVFB skins with the \gui{Browse...} option. \image designer-preview-deviceskin-selection.png \section1 Viewing the Form's Code Since Qt 4.4, it is possible to view code generated by the User Interface Compiler (uic) for the \QD form. \image designer-form-viewcode.png Select \gui{View Code...} from the \gui{Form} menu and a dialog with the generated code will be displayed. The screenshot below is an example of code generated by the \c{uic}. \image designer-code-viewer.png \section1 Saving and Printing the Form Forms created in \QD can be saved to an image or printed. \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-file-menu.png \i \bold{Saving Forms} To save a form as an image, choose the \gui{Save Image...} option. The file will be saved in \c{.png} format. \bold{Printing Forms} To print a form, select the \gui{Print...} option. \endtable */ /*! \page designer-connection-mode.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Using Layouts in Qt Designer \nextpage Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode \title Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode \image designer-connection-mode.png In \QD's signals and slots editing mode, you can connect objects in a form together using Qt's signals and slots mechanism. Both widgets and layouts can be connected via an intuitive connection interface, using the menu of compatible signals and slots provided by \QD. When a form is saved, all connections are preserved so that they will be ready for use when your project is built. \tableofcontents For more information on Qt's signals and sltos mechanism, refer to the \l{Signals and Slots} document. \section1 Connecting Objects To begin connecting objects, enter the signals and slots editing mode by opening the \gui Edit menu and selecting \gui{Edit Signals/Slots}, or by pressing the \key F4 key. All widgets and layouts on the form can be connected together. However, spacers just provide spacing hints to layouts, so they cannot be connected to other objects. \target HighlightedObjects \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-connection-highlight.png \i \bold{Highlighted Objects} When the cursor is over an object that can be used in a connection, the object will be highlighted. \endtable To make a connectionn, press the left mouse button and drag the cursor towards the object you want to connect it to. As you do this, a line will extend from the source object to the cursor. If the cursor is over another object on the form, the line will end with an arrow head that points to the destination object. This indicates that a connection will be made between the two objects when you release the mouse button. You can abandon the connection at any point while you are dragging the connection path by pressing \key{Esc}. \target MakingAConnection \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-connection-making.png \i \bold{Making a Connection} The connection path will change its shape as the cursor moves around the form. As it passes over objects, they are highlighted, indicating that they can be used in a signal and slot connection. Release the mouse button to make the connection. \endtable The \gui{Configure Connection} dialog (below) is displayed, showing signals from the source object and slots from the destination object that you can use. \image designer-connection-dialog.png To complete the connection, select a signal from the source object and a slot from the destination object, then click \key OK. Click \key Cancel if you wish to abandon the connection. \note If the \gui{Show all signals and slots} checkbox is selected, all available signals from the source object will be shown. Otherwise, the signals and slots inherited from QWidget will be hidden. You can make as many connections as you like between objects on the form; it is possible to connect signals from objects to slots in the form itself. As a result, the signal and slot connections in many dialogs can be completely configured from within \QD. \target ConnectingToTheForm \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-connection-to-form.png \i \bold{Connecting to a Form} To connect an object to the form itself, simply position the cursor over the form and release the mouse button. The end point of the connection changes to the electrical "ground" symbol. \endtable \section1 Editing and Deleting Connections By default, connection paths are created with two labels that show the signal and slot involved in the connection. These labels are usually oriented along the line of the connection. You can move them around inside their host widgets by dragging the red square at each end of the connection path. \target ConnectionEditor \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-connection-editor.png \i \bold{The Signal/Slot Editor} The signal and slot used in a connection can be changed after it has been set up. When a connection is configured, it becomes visible in \QD's signal and slot editor where it can be further edited. You can also edit signal/slot connections by double-clicking on the connection path or one of its labels to display the Connection Dialog. \endtable \target DeletingConnections \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-connection-editing.png \i \bold{Deleting Connections} The whole connection can be selected by clicking on any of its path segments. Once selected, a connection can be deleted with the \key Delete key, ensuring that it will not be set up in the UI file. \endtable */ /*! \page designer-buddy-mode.html \contentspage{Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode \nextpage Qt Designer's Tab Order Editing Mode \title Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode \image designer-buddy-mode.png One of the most useful basic features of Qt is the support for buddy widgets. A buddy widget accepts the input focus on behalf of a QLabel when the user types the label's shortcut key combination. The buddy concept is also used in Qt's \l{Model/View Programming}{model/view} framework. \section1 Linking Labels to Buddy Widgets To enter buddy editing mode, open the \gui Edit menu and select \gui{Edit Buddies}. This mode presents the widgets on the form in a similar way to \l{Qt Designer's Signals and Slots Editing Mode}{signals and slots editing mode} but in this mode, connections must start at label widgets. Ideally, you should connect each label widget that provides a shortcut with a suitable input widget, such as a QLineEdit. \target MakingBuddies \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-buddy-making.png \i \bold{Making Buddies} To define a buddy widget for a label, click on the label, drag the connection to another widget on the form, and release the mouse button. The connection shown indicates how input focus is passed to the buddy widget. You can use the form preview to test the connections between each label and its buddy. \endtable \section1 Removing Buddy Connections Only one buddy widget can be defined for each label. To change the buddy used, it is necessary to delete any existing buddy connection before you create a new one. Connections between labels and their buddy widgets can be deleted in the same way as signal-slot connections in signals and slots editing mode: Select the buddy connection by clicking on it and press the \key Delete key. This operation does not modify either the label or its buddy in any way. */ /*! \page designer-tab-order.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Qt Designer's Buddy Editing Mode \nextpage Using Containers in Qt Designer \title Qt Designer's Tab Order Editing Mode \image designer-tab-order-mode.png Many users expect to be able to navigate between widgets and controls using only the keyboard. Qt lets the user navigate between input widgets with the \key Tab and \key{Shift+Tab} keyboard shortcuts. The default \e{tab order} is based on the order in which widgets are constructed. Although this order may be sufficient for many users, it is often better to explicitly specify the tab order to make your application easier to use. \section1 Setting the Tab Order To enter tab order editing mode, open the \gui Edit menu and select \gui{Edit Tab Order}. In this mode, each input widget in the form is shown with a number indicating its position in the tab order. So, if the user gives the first input widget the input focus and then presses the tab key, the focus will move to the second input widget, and so on. The tab order is defined by clicking on each of the numbers in the correct order. The first number you click will change to red, indicating the currently edited position in the tab order chain. The widget associated with the number will become the first one in the tab order chain. Clicking on another widget will make it the second in the tab order, and so on. Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the tab order in the form -- you do not need to click every input widget if you see that the remaining widgets are already in the correct order. Numbers, for which you already set the order, change to green, while those which are not clicked yet, remain blue. If you make a mistake, simply double click outside of any number or choose \gui{Restart} from the form's context menu to start again. If you have many widgets on your form and would like to change the tab order in the middle or at the end of the tab order chain, you can edit it at any position. Press \key{Ctrl} and click the number from which you want to start. Alternatively, choose \gui{Start from Here} in the context menu. */ /*! \page designer-using-containers.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Qt Designer's Tab Order Editing Mode \nextpage Creating Main Windows in Qt Designer \title Using Containers in Qt Designer Container widgets provide high level control over groups of objects on a form. They can be used to perform a variety of functions, such as managing input widgets, providing paged and tabbed layouts, or just acting as decorative containers for other objects. \image designer-widget-morph.png \QD provides visual feedback to help you place objects inside your containers. When you drag an object from the widget box (or elsewhere) on the form, each container will be highlighted when the cursor is positioned over it. This indicates that you can drop the object inside, making it a child object of the container. This feedback is important because it is easy to place objects close to containers without actually placing them inside. Both widgets and spacers can be used inside containers. Stacked widgets, tab widgets, and toolboxes are handled specially in \QD. Normally, when adding pages (tabs, pages, compartments) to these containers in your own code, you need to supply existing widgets, either as placeholders or containing child widgets. In \QD, these are automatically created for you, so you can add child objects to each page straight away. Each container typically allows its child objects to be arranged in one or more layouts. The type of layout management provided depends on each container, although setting the layout is usually just a matter of selecting the container by clicking it, and applying a layout. The table below shows a list of available containers. \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-containers-frame.png \i \bold Frames Frames are used to enclose and group widgets, as well as to provide decoration. They are used as the foundation for more complex containers, but they can also be used as placeholders in forms. The most important properties of frames are \c frameShape, \c frameShadow, \c lineWidth, and \c midLineWidth. These are described in more detail in the QFrame class description. \row \i \inlineimage designer-containers-groupbox.png \i \bold{Group Boxes} Group boxes are usually used to group together collections of checkboxes and radio buttons with similar purposes. Among the significant properties of group boxes are \c title, \c flat, \c checkable, and \c checked. These are demonstrated in the \l{widgets/groupbox}{Group Box} example, and described in the QGroupBox class documentation. Each group box can contain its own layout, and this is necessary if it contains other widgets. To add a layout to the group box, click inside it and apply the layout as usual. \row \i \inlineimage designer-containers-stackedwidget.png \i \bold{Stacked Widgets} Stacked widgets are collections of widgets in which only the topmost layer is visible. Control over the visible layer is usually managed by another widget, such as combobox, using signals and slots. \QD shows arrows in the top-right corner of the stack to allow you to see all the widgets in the stack when designing it. These arrows do not appear in the preview or in the final component. To navigate between pages in the stack, select the stacked widget and use the \gui{Next Page} and \gui{Previous Page} entries from the context menu. The \gui{Insert Page} and \gui{Delete Page} context menu options allow you to add and remove pages. \row \i \inlineimage designer-containers-tabwidget.png \i \bold{Tab Widgets} Tab widgets allow the developer to split up the contents of a widget into different labelled sections, only one of which is displayed at any given time. By default, the tab widget contains two tabs, and these can be deleted or renamed as required. You can also add additional tabs. To delete a tab: \list \o Click on its label to make it the current tab. \o Select the tab widget and open its context menu. \o Select \gui{Delete Page}. \endlist To add a new tab: \list \o Select the tab widget and open its context menu. \o Select \gui{Insert Page}. \o You can add a page before or after the \e current page. \QD will create a new widget for that particular tab and insert it into the tab widget. \o You can set the title of the current tab by changing the \c currentTabText property in the \gui{Property Editor}. \endlist \row \i \inlineimage designer-containers-toolbox.png \i \bold{ToolBox Widgets} Toolbox widgets provide a series of pages or compartments in a toolbox. They are handled in a way similar to stacked widgets. To rename a page in a toolbox, make the toolbox your current pange and change its \c currentItemText property from the \gui{Property Editor}. To add a new page, select \gui{Insert Page} from the toolbox widget's context menu. You can add the page before or after the current page. To delete a page, select \gui{Delete Page} from the toolbox widget's context menu. \row \i \inlineimage designer-containers-dockwidget.png \i \bold{Dock Widgets} Dock widgets are floating panels, often containing input widgets and more complex controls, that are either attached to the edges of the main window in "dock areas", or floated as independent tool windows. Although dock widgets can be added to any type of form, they are typically used with forms created from the \l{Creating Main Windows in Qt Designer}{main window template}. \endtable */ /*! \page designer-creating-mainwindows.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Using Containers in Qt Designer \nextpage Editing Resources with Qt Designer \title Creating Main Windows in Qt Designer \QD can be used to create user interfaces for different purposes, and it provides different kinds of form templates for each user interface. The main window template is used to create application windows with menu bars, toolbars, and dock widgets. \omit \image designer-mainwindow-example.png \endomit Create a new main window by opening the \gui File menu and selecting the \gui{New Form...} option, or by pressing \key{Ctrl+N}. Then, select the \gui{Main Window} template. This template provides a main application window containing a menu bar and a toolbar by default -- these can be removed if they are not required. If you remove the menu bar, a new one can be created by selecting the \gui{Create Menu Bar} option from the context menu, obtained by right-clicking within the main window form. An application can have only \bold one menu bar, but \bold several toolbars. \section1 Menus Menus are added to the menu bar by modifying the \gui{Type Here} placeholders. One of these is always present for editing purposes, and will not be displayed in the preview or in the finished window. Once created, the properties of a menu can be accessed using the \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode#The Property Editor}{Property Editor}, and each menu can be accessed for this purpose via the \l{Qt Designer's Widget Editing Mode#The Object Inspector}{The Object Inspector}. Existing menus can be removed by opening a context menu over the label in the menu bar, and selecting \gui{Remove Menu 'menu_name'}. \target CreatingAMenu \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu1.png \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu2.png \i \bold{Creating a Menu} Double-click the placeholder item to begin editing. The menu text, displayed using a line edit, can be modified. \row \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu3.png \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu4.png \i Insert the required text for the new menu. Inserting an ampersand character (&) causes the letter following it to be used as a mnemonic for the menu. Press \key Return or \key Enter to accept the new text, or press \key Escape to reject it. You can undo the editing operation later if required. \endtable Menus can also be rearranged in the menu bar simply by dragging and dropping them in the preferred location. A vertical red line indicates the position where the menu will be inserted. Menus can contain any number of entries and separators, and can be nested to the required depth. Adding new entries to menus can be achieved by navigating the menu structure in the usual way. \target CreatingAMenuEntry \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu-entry1.png \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu-entry2.png \i \bold{Creating a Menu Entry} Double-click the \gui{new action} placeholder to begin editing, or double-click \gui{new separator} to insert a new separator line after the last entry in the menu. The menu entry's text is displayed using a line edit, and can be modified. \row \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu-entry3.png \i \inlineimage designer-creating-menu-entry4.png \i Insert the required text for the new entry, optionally using the ampersand character (&) to mark the letter to use as a mnemonic for the entry. Press \key Return or \key Enter to accept the new text, or press \key Escape to reject it. The action created for this menu entry will be accessible via the \l{#TheActionEditor}{Action Editor}, and any associated keyboard shortcut can be set there. \endtable Just like with menus, entries can be moved around simply by dragging and dropping them in the preferred location. When an entry is dragged over a closed menu, the menu will open to allow it to be inserted there. Since menu entries are based on actions, they can also be dropped onto toolbars, where they will be displayed as toolbar buttons. \section1 Toolbars ### SCREENSHOT Toolbars ared added to a main window in a similar way to the menu bar: Select the \gui{Add Tool Bar} option from the form's context menu. Alternatively, if there is an existing toolbar in the main window, you can click the arrow on its right end to create a new toolbar. Toolbar buttons are created using the action system to populate each toolbar, rather than by using specific button widgets from the widget box. Since actions can be represented by menu entries and toolbar buttons, they can be moved between menus and toolbars. To share an action between a menu and a toolbar, drag its icon from the \l{#TheActionEditor}{Action Editor} to the toolbar rather than from the menu where its entry is located. New actions for menus and toolbars can be created in the \l{#TheActionEditor}{Action Editor}. \section1 Actions With the menu bar and the toolbars in place, it's time to populate them with action: \QD provides an action editor to simplify the creation and management of actions. \target TheActionEditor \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-action-editor.png \i \bold{The Action Editor} Enable the action editor by opening the \gui Tools menu, and switching on the \gui{Action Editor} option. The action editor allows you to create \gui New actions and \gui Delete actions. It also provides a search function, \gui Filter, using the action's text. \QD's action editor can be viewed in the classic \gui{Icon View} and \gui{Detailed View}. The screenshot below shows the action editor in \gui{Detailed View}. You can also copy and paste actions between menus, toolbars and forms. \endtable To create an action, use the action editor's \gui New button, which will then pop up an input dialog. Provide the new action with a \gui Text -- this is the text that will appear in a menu entry and as the action's tooltip. The text is also automatically added to an "action" prefix, creating the action's \gui{Object Name}. In addition, the dialog provides the option of selecting an \gui Icon for the action, as well as removing the current icon. Once the action is created, it can be used wherever actions are applicable. \target AddingAnAction \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-adding-menu-action.png \i \inlineimage designer-adding-toolbar-action.png \i \bold{Adding an Action} To add an action to a menu or a toolbar, simply press the left mouse button over the action in the action editor, and drag it to the preferred location. \QD provides highlighted guide lines that tell you where the action will be added. Release the mouse button to add the action when you have found the right spot. \endtable \section1 Dock Widgets Since dock widgets are \l{Using Containers in Qt Designer} {container widgets}, they can be added to a form in the usuasl way. Once added to a form, dock widgets are not placed in any particular dock area by default; you need to set the \gui{docked} property to true for each widget and choose an appropriate value for its \gui{dockWidgetArea} property. \target AddingADockWidget \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-adding-dockwidget.png \i \bold{Adding a Dock Widget} To add a dock widget, simply drag one from the \gui Containers section of the widget box, and drop it onto the main form area. Just like other widgets, its properties can be modified with the \gui{Property Editor}. Dock widgets can be optionally floated as indpendent tool windows. Hence, it is useful to give them window titles by setting their \gui{windowTitle} property. This also helps to identify them on the form. \endtable */ /*! \page designer-resources.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Creating Main Windows in Qt Designer \nextpage Using Stylesheets with Qt Designer \title Editing Resources with Qt Designer \image designer-resources-editing.png \QD fully supports the \l{The Qt Resource System}{Qt Resource System}, enabling resources to be specified together with forms as they are designed. To aid designers and developers manage resources for their applications, \QD's resource editor allows resources to be defined on a per-form basis. In other words, each form can have a separate resource file. \section1 Defining a Resource File To specify a resource file you must enable the resource editor by opening the \gui Tools menu, and switching on the \gui{Resource Browser} option. \target ResourceFiles \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-resource-browser.png \i \bold{Resource Files} Within the resource browser, you can open existing resource files or create new ones. Click the \gui{Edit Resources} button \inlineimage designer-edit-resources-button.png to edit your resources. To reload resources, click on the \gui Reload button \inlineimage designer-reload-resources-button.png . \endtable Once a resource file is loaded, you can create or remove entries in it using the given \gui{Add Files} \inlineimage designer-add-resource-entry-button.png and \gui{Remove Files} \inlineimage designer-remove-resource-entry-button.png buttons, and specify resources (e.g., images) using the \gui{Add Files} button \inlineimage designer-add-files-button.png . Note that these resources must reside within the current resource file's directory or one of its subdirectories. \target EditResource \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-edit-resource.png \i \bold{Editing Resource Files} Press the \inlineimage designer-add-resource-entry-button.png button to add a new resource entry to the file. Then use the \gui{Add Files} button \inlineimage designer-add-files-button.png to specify the resource. You can remove resources by selecting the corresponding entry in the resource editor, and pressing the \inlineimage designer-remove-resource-entry-button.png button. \endtable \section1 Using the Resources Once the resources are defined you can use them actively when composing your form. For example, you might want to create a tool button using an icon specified in the resource file. \target UsingResources \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-resources-using.png \i \bold{Using Resources} When changing properties with values that may be defined within a resource file, \QD's property editor allows you to specify a resource in addition to the option of selecting a source file in the ordinary way. \row \i \inlineimage designer-resource-selector.png \i \bold{Selecting a Resource} You can open the resource selector by clicking \gui{Choose Resource...} to add resources any time during the design process. \omit ... check with Friedemann To quickly assign icon pixmaps to actions or pixmap properties, you may drag the pixmap from the resource editor to the action editor, or to the pixmap property in the property editor. \endomit \endtable */ /*! \page designer-stylesheet.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Editing Resources with Qt Designer \nextpage Using a Designer UI File in Your Application \title Using Stylesheets with Qt Designer Since Qt 4.2, it is possible to edit stylesheets in \QD with the stylesheet editor. \target UsingStylesheets \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-stylesheet-options.png \bold{Setting a Stylesheet} The stylesheet editor can be accessed by right-clicking a widget and selecting \gui{Change styleSheet...} \row \i \inlineimage designer-stylesheet-usage.png \endtable */ /*! \page designer-using-a-ui-file.html \previouspage Using Stylesheets with Qt Designer \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \nextpage Using Custom Widgets with Qt Designer \title Using a Designer UI File in Your Application With Qt's integrated build tools, \l{qmake Manual}{qmake} and \l uic, the code for user interface components created with \QD is automatically generated when the rest of your application is built. Forms can be included and used directly from your application. Alternatively, you can use them to extend subclasses of standard widgets. These forms can be processed at compile time or at run time, depending on the approach used. \tableofcontents \section1 Compile Time Form Processing A compile time processed form can be used in your application with one of the following approaches: \list \o The Direct Approach: you construct a widget to use as a placeholder for the component, and set up the user interface inside it. \o The Single Inheritance Approach: you subclass the form's base class (QWidget or QDialog, for example), and include a private instance of the form's user interface object. \o The MultipleInheritance Approach: you subclass both the form's base class and the form's user interface object. This allows the widgets defined in the form to be used directly from within the scope of the subclass. \endlist \section2 The Direct Approach To demonstrate how to use user interface (UI) files straight from \QD, we create a simple Calculator Form application. This is based on the original \l{Calculator Form Example}{Calculator Form} example. The application consists of one source file, \c main.cpp and a UI file. The \c{calculatorform.ui} file designed with \QD is shown below: \image directapproach-calculatorform.png We will use \c qmake to build the executable, so we need to write a \c{.pro} file: \snippet doc/src/snippets/uitools/calculatorform/calculatorform.pro 0 The special feature of this file is the \c FORMS declaration that tells \c qmake which files to process with \c uic. In this case, the \c calculatorform.ui file is used to create a \c ui_calculatorform.h file that can be used by any file listed in the \c SOURCES declaration. To ensure that \c qmake generates the \c ui_calculatorform.h file, we need to include it in a file listed in \c SOURCES. Since we only have \c main.cpp, we include it there: \snippet doc/src/snippets/uitools/calculatorform/main.cpp 0 This include is an additional check to ensure that we do not generate code for UI files that are not used. The \c main function creates the calculator widget by constructing a standard QWidget that we use to host the user interface described by the \c calculatorform.ui file. \snippet doc/src/snippets/uitools/calculatorform/main.cpp 1 In this case, the \c{Ui::CalculatorForm} is an interface description object from the \c ui_calculatorform.h file that sets up all the dialog's widgets and the connections between its signals and slots. This approach provides a quick and easy way to use simple, self-contained components in your applications, but many componens created with \QD will require close integration with the rest of the application code. For instance, the \c CalculatorForm code provided above will compile and run, but the QSpinBox objects will not interact with the QLabel as we need a custom slot to carry out the add operation and display the result in the QLabel. To achieve this, we need to subclass a standard Qt widget (known as the single inheritance approach). \section2 The Single Inheritance Approach In this approach, we subclass a Qt widget and set up the user interface from within the constructor. Components used in this way expose the widgets and layouts used in the form to the Qt widget subclass, and provide a standard system for making signal and slot connections between the user interface and other objects in your application. This approach is used in the \l{Calculator Form Example}{Calculator Form} example. To ensure that we can use the user interface, we need to include the header file that \c uic generates before referring to \c{Ui::CalculatorForm}: \snippet examples/designer/calculatorform/calculatorform.h 0 This means that the \c{.pro} file must be updated to include \c{calculatorform.h}: \snippet examples/designer/calculatorform/calculatorform.pro 0 The subclass is defined in the following way: \snippet examples/designer/calculatorform/calculatorform.h 1 The important feature of the class is the private \c ui object which provides the code for setting up and managing the user interface. The constructor for the subclass constructs and configures all the widgets and layouts for the dialog just by calling the \c ui object's \c setupUi() function. Once this has been done, it is possible to modify the user interface as needed. \snippet examples/designer/calculatorform/calculatorform.cpp 0 We can connect signals and slots in user interface widgets in the usual way, taking care to prefix the \c ui object to each widget used. The advantages of this approach are its simple use of inheritance to provide a QWidget-based interface, and its encapsulation of the user interface widget variables within the \c ui data member. We can use this method to define a number of user interfaces within the same widget, each of which is contained within its own namespace, and overlay (or compose) them. This approach can be used to create individual tabs from existing forms, for example. \section2 The Multiple Inheritance Approach Forms created with \QD can be subclassed together with a standard QWidget-based class. This approach makes all the user interface components defined in the form directly accessible within the scope of the subclass, and enables signal and slot connections to be made in the usual way with the \l{QObject::connect()}{connect()} function. This approach is used in the \l{Multiple Inheritance Example} {Multiple Inheritance} example. We need to include the header file that \c uic generates from the \c calculatorform.ui file: \snippet examples/uitools/multipleinheritance/calculatorform.h 0 The class is defined in a similar way to the one used in the \l{The Single Inheritance Approach}{single inheritance approach}, except that this time we inherit from \e{both} QWidget and \c{Ui::CalculatorForm}: \snippet examples/uitools/multipleinheritance/calculatorform.h 1 We inherit \c{Ui::CalculatorForm} privately to ensure that the user interface objects are private in our subclass. We can also inherit it with the \c public or \c protected keywords in the same way that we could have made \c ui public or protected in the previous case. The constructor for the subclass performs many of the same tasks as the constructor used in the \l{The Single Inheritance Approach} {single inheritance} example: \snippet examples/uitools/multipleinheritance/calculatorform.cpp 0 In this case, the widgets used in the user interface can be accessed in the same say as a widget created in code by hand. We no longer require the \c{ui} prefix to access them. Subclassing using multiple inheritance gives us more direct access to the contents of the form, is slightly cleaner than the single inheritance approach, but does not conveniently support composition of multiple user interfaces. \section1 Run Time Form Processing Alternatively, forms can be processed at run time, producing dynamically- generated user interfaces. This can be done using the QtUiTools module that provides the QUiLoader class to handle forms created with \QD. \section2 The UiTools Approach A resource file containing a UI file is required to process forms at run time. Also, the application needs to be configured to use the QtUiTools module. This is done by including the following declaration in a \c qmake project file, ensuring that the application is compiled and linked appropriately. \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 0 The QUiLoader class provides a form loader object to construct the user interface. This user interface can be retrieved from any QIODevice, e.g., a QFile object, to obtain a form stored in a project's resource file. The QUiLoader::load() function constructs the form widget using the user interface description contained in the file. The QtUiTools module classes can be included using the following directive: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 1 The QUiLoader::load() function is invoked as shown in this code from the \l{Text Finder Example}{Text Finder} example: \snippet examples/uitools/textfinder/textfinder.cpp 4 In a class that uses QtUiTools to build its user interface at run time, we can locate objects in the form using qFindChild(). For example, in the follownig code, we locate some components based on their object names and widget types: \snippet examples/uitools/textfinder/textfinder.cpp 1 Processing forms at run-time gives the developer the freedom to change a program's user interface, just by changing the UI file. This is useful when customizing programs to suit various user needs, such as extra large icons or a different colour scheme for accessibility support. \section1 Automatic Connections The signals and slots connections defined for compile time or run time forms can either be set up manually or automatically, using QMetaObject's ability to make connections between signals and suitably-named slots. Generally, in a QDialog, if we want to process the information entered by the user before accepting it, we need to connect the clicked() signal from the \gui OK button to a custom slot in our dialog. We will first show an example of the dialog in which the slot is connected by hand then compare it with a dialog that uses automatic connection. \section2 A Dialog Without Auto-Connect We define the dialog in the same way as before, but now include a slot in addition to the constructor: \snippet doc/src/snippets/designer/noautoconnection/imagedialog.h 0 The \c checkValues() slot will be used to validate the values provided by the user. In the dialog's constructor we set up the widgets as before, and connect the \gui Cancel button's \l{QPushButton::clicked()}{clicked()} signal to the dialog's reject() slot. We also disable the \l{QPushButton::autoDefault}{autoDefault} property in both buttons to ensure that the dialog does not interfere with the way that the line edit handles return key events: \snippet doc/src/snippets/designer/noautoconnection/imagedialog.cpp 0 \dots \snippet doc/src/snippets/designer/noautoconnection/imagedialog.cpp 1 We connect the \gui OK button's \l{QPushButton::clicked()}{clicked()} signal to the dialog's checkValues() slot which we implement as follows: \snippet doc/src/snippets/designer/noautoconnection/imagedialog.cpp 2 This custom slot does the minimum necessary to ensure that the data entered by the user is valid - it only accepts the input if a name was given for the image. \section2 Widgets and Dialogs with Auto-Connect Although it is easy to implement a custom slot in the dialog and connect it in the constructor, we could instead use QMetaObject's auto-connection facilities to connect the \gui OK button's clicked() signal to a slot in our subclass. \c{uic} automatically generates code in the dialog's \c setupUi() function to do this, so we only need to declare and implement a slot with a name that follows a standard convention: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 2 Using this convention, we can define and implement a slot that responds to mouse clicks on the \gui OK button: \snippet doc/src/snippets/designer/autoconnection/imagedialog.h 0 Another example of automatic signal and slot connection would be the \l{Text Finder Example}{Text Finder} with its \c{on_findButton_clicked()} slot. We use QMetaObject's system to enable signal and slot connections: \snippet examples/uitools/textfinder/textfinder.cpp 2 This enables us to implement the slot, as shown below: \snippet examples/uitools/textfinder/textfinder.cpp 6 \dots \snippet examples/uitools/textfinder/textfinder.cpp 8 Automatic connection of signals and slots provides both a standard naming convention and an explicit interface for widget designers to work to. By providing source code that implements a given interface, user interface designers can check that their designs actually work without having to write code themselves. */ /*! \page designer-customizing-forms.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Using Stylesheets with Qt Designer \nextpage Using Custom Widgets with Qt Designer \title Customizing Qt Designer Forms \image designer-form-settings.png When saving a form in \QD, it is stored as a UI file. Several form settings, for example the grid settings or the margin and spacing for the default layout, are stored along with the form's components. These settings are used when the \l uic generates the form's C++ code. For more information on how to use forms in your application, see the \l{Using a Designer UI File in Your Application} section. \section1 Modifying the Form Settings To modify the form settings, open the \gui Form menu and select \gui{Form Settings...} In the forms settings dialog you can specify the \gui Author of the form. You can also alter the margin and spacing properties for the form's default layout (\gui {Layout Default}). These default layout properties will be replaced by the corresponding \gui {Layout Function}, if the function is specified, when \c uic generates code for the form. The form settings dialog lets you specify functions for both the margin and the spacing. \target LayoutFunction \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-form-layoutfunction.png \i \bold{Layout Function} The default layout properties will be replaced by the corresponding \gui{Layout Function}, when \c uic generates code for the form. This is useful when different environments requires different layouts for the same form. To specify layout functions for the form's margin and spacing, check the \gui{Layout Function} group box to enable the line edits. \endtable You can also specify the form's \gui{Include Hints}; i.e., provide a list of the header files which will then be included in the form window's associated UI file. Header files may be local, i.e., relative to the project's directory, \c "mywidget.h", or global, i.e. part of Qt or the compilers standard libraries: \c . Finally, you can specify the function used to load pixmaps into the form window (the \gui {Pixmap Function}). */ /*! \page designer-using-custom-widgets.html \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \previouspage Customizing Qt Designer Forms \nextpage Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer \title Using Custom Widgets with Qt Designer \QD can display custom widgets through its extensible plugin mechanism, allowing the range of designable widgets to be extended by the user and third parties. This feature also allows \QD to optionally support \l{Qt3Support}{Qt 3 compatibility widgets}. Alternatively, it is possible to use existing widgets as placeholders for widget classes that provide similar APIs. Widgets from the Qt3Support library are made available via in \QD's support for custom widgets. \section1 Handling Custom Widgets Although \QD supports all of the standard Qt widgets, and can be configured to handle widgets supplied in the Qt3Support library, some specialized widgets may not be available as standard for a number of reasons: \list \i Custom widgets may not be available at the time the user interface is being designed. \i Custom widgets may be platform-specific, and designers may be developing the user interface on a different platform to end users. \i The source code for a custom widget is not available, or the user interface designers are unable to use the widget for non-technical reasons. \endlist In the above situations, it is still possible to design forms with the aim of using custom widgets in the application. To achieve this, we can use the widget promotion feature of \QD. In all other cases, where the source code to the custom widgets is available, we can adapt the custom widget for use with \QD. \section2 Promoting Widgets \image designer-promoting-widgets.png If some forms must be designed, but certain custom widgets are unavailble to the designer, we can substitute similar widgets to represent the missing widgets. For example, we might represent instances of a custom push button class, \c MyPushButton, with instances of QPushButton and promote these to \c MyPushButton so that \l{uic.html}{uic} generates suitable code for this missing class. When choosing a widget to use as a placeholder, it is useful to compare the API of the missing widget with those of standard Qt widgets. For specialized widgets that subclass standard classes, the obvious choice of placeholder is the base class of the custom widget; for example, QSlider might be used for specialized QSlider subclasses. For specialized widgets that do not share a common API with standard Qt widgets, it is worth considering adapting a custom widget for use in \QD. If this is not possible then QWidget is the obvious choice for a placeholder widget since it is the lowest common denominator for all widgets. To add a placeholder, select an object of a suitable base class and choose \gui{Promote to ...} from the form's context menu. After entering the class name and header file in the lower part of the dialog, choose \gui{Add}. The placeholder class will now appear along with the base class in the upper list. Click the \gui{Promote} button to accept this choice. Now, when the form's context menu is opened over objects of the base class, the placeholder class will appear in the \gui{Promote to} submenu, allowing for convenient promotion of objects to that class. A promoted widget can be reverted to its base class by choosing \gui{Demote to} from the form's context menu. \section2 User Defined Custom Widgets \image worldtimeclockplugin-example.png Custom widgets can be adapted for use with \QD, giving designers the opportunity to configure the user interface using the actual widgets that will be used in an application rather than placeholder widgets. The process of creating a custom widget plugin is described in the \l{Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer} chapter of this manual. To use a plugin created in this way, it is necessary to ensure that the plugin is located on a path that \QD searches for plugins. Generally, plugins stored in \c{$QTDIR/plugins/designer} will be loaded when \QD starts. Further information on building and installing plugins can be found \l{Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer#BuildingandInstallingthePlugin} {here}. You can also refer to the \l{How to Create Qt Plugins} {Plugins HOWTO} document for information about creating plugins. */ /*! \page designer-creating-custom-widgets.html \previouspage Using Custom Widgets with Qt Designer \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \nextpage Creating Custom Widget Extensions \title Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer \QD's plugin-based architecture allows user-defined and third party custom widgets to be edited just like you do with standard Qt widgets. All of the custom widget's features are made available to \QD, including widget properties, signals, and slots. Since \QD uses real widgets during the form design process, custom widgets will appear the same as they do when previewed. \image worldtimeclockplugin-example.png The \l QtDesigner module provides you with the ability to create custom widgets in \QD. \section1 Getting Started To integrate a custom widget with \QD, you require a suitable description for the widget and an appropriate \c{.pro} file. \section2 Providing an Interface Description To inform \QD about the type of widget you want to provide, create a subclass of QDesignerCustomWidgetInterface that describes the various properties your widget exposes. Most of these are supplied by functions that are pure virtual in the base class, because only the author of the plugin can provide this information. \table \header \o Function \o Description of the return value \row \o \c name() \o The name of the class that provides the widget. \row \o \c group() \o The group in \QD's widget box that the widget belongs to. \row \o \c toolTip() \o A short description to help users identify the widget in \QD. \row \o \c whatsThis() \o A longer description of the widget for users of \QD. \row \o \c includeFile() \o The header file that must be included in applications that use this widget. This information is stored in UI files and will be used by \c uic to create a suitable \c{#includes} statement in the code it generates for the form containing the custom widget. \row \o \c icon() \o An icon that can be used to represent the widget in \QD's widget box. \row \o \c isContainer() \o True if the widget will be used to hold child widgets; false otherwise. \row \o \c createWidget() \o A QWidget pointer to an instance of the custom widget, constructed with the parent supplied. \note createWidget() is a factory function responsible for creating the widget only. The custom widget's properties will not be available until load() returns. \row \o \c domXml() \o A description of the widget's properties, such as its object name, size hint, and other standard QWidget properties. \row \o \c codeTemplate() \o This function is reserved for future use by \QD. \endtable Two other virtual functions can also be reimplemented: \table \row \o \c initialize() \o Sets up extensions and other features for custom widgets. Custom container extensions (see QDesignerContainerExtension) and task menu extensions (see QDesignerTaskMenuExtension) should be set up in this function. \row \o \c isInitialized() \o Returns true if the widget has been initialized; returns false otherwise. Reimplementations usually check whether the \c initialize() function has been called and return the result of this test. \endtable \section2 Notes on the \c{domXml()} Function The \c{domXml()} function returns a UI file snippet that is used by \QD's widget factory to create a custom widget and its applicable properties. Since Qt 4.4, \QD's widget box allows for a complete UI file to describe \bold one custom widget. The UI file can be loaded using the \c{} tag. Specifying the tag allows for adding the element that contains additional information for custom widgets. The \c{} tag is sufficient if no additional information is required If the custom widget does not provide a reasonable size hint, it is necessary to specify a default geometry in the string returned by the \c domXml() function in your subclass. For example, the \c AnalogClockPlugin provided by the \l{designer/customwidgetplugin} {Custom Widget Plugin} example, defines a default widgetgeometry in the following way: \dots \snippet examples/designer/customwidgetplugin/customwidgetplugin.cpp 11 \dots An additional feature of the \c domXml() function is that, if it returns an empty string, the widget will not be installed in \QD's widget box. However, it can still be used by other widgets in the form. This feature is used to hide widgets that should not be explicitly created by the user, but are required by other widgets. A complete custom widget specification looks like: \code displayname="MyWidget"> widgets::MyWidget addPage \endcode Attributes of the \c{} tag: \table \header \o Attribute \o Presence \o Values \o Comment \row \o \c{language} \o optional \o "c++", "jambi" \o This attribute specifies the language the custom widget is intended for. It is mainly there to prevent C++-plugins from appearing in Qt Jambi. \row \o \c{displayname} \o optional \o Class name \o The value of the attribute appears in the Widget box and can be used to strip away namespaces. \endtable The \c{} tag tells \QD and \l uic which method should be used to add pages to a container widget. This applies to container widgets that require calling a particular method to add a child rather than adding the child by passing the parent. In particular, this is relevant for containers that are not a a subclass of the containers provided in \QD, but are based on the notion of \e{Current Page}. In addition, you need to provide a container extension for them. The \c{} element can contain a list of property meta information. Currently, properties of type string are supported. For these properties, the \c{} tag can be used. This tag has the following attributes: \table \header \o Attribute \o Presence \o Values \o Comment \row \o \c{name} \o required \o Name of the property \row \o \c{type} \o required \o See below table \o The value of the attribute determines how the property editor will handle them. \row \o \c{notr} \o optional \o "true", "false" \o If the attribute is "true", the value is not meant to be translated. \endtable Values of the \c{type} attribute of the string property: \table \header \o Value \o Type \row \o \c{"richtext"} \o Rich text. \row \o \c{"multiline"} \o Multi-line plain text. \row \o \c{"singleline"} \o Single-line plain text. \row \o \c{"stylesheet"} \o A CSS-style sheet. \row \o \c{"objectname"} \o An object name (restricted set of valid characters). \row \o \c{"url"} \o URL, file name. \endtable \section1 Plugin Requirements In order for plugins to work correctly on all platforms, you need to ensure that they export the symbols needed by \QD. First of all, the plugin class must be exported in order for the plugin to be loaded by \QD. Use the Q_EXPORT_PLUGIN2() macro to do this. Also, the QDESIGNER_WIDGET_EXPORT macro must be used to define each custom widget class within a plugin, that \QD will instantiate. \section1 Creating Well Behaved Widgets Some custom widgets have special user interface features that may make them behave differently to many of the standard widgets found in \QD. Specifically, if a custom widget grabs the keyboard as a result of a call to QWidget::grabKeyboard(), the operation of \QD will be affected. To give custom widgets special behavior in \QD, provide an implementation of the initialize() function to configure the widget construction process for \QD specific behavior. This function will be called for the first time before any calls to createWidget() and could perhaps set an internal flag that can be tested later when \QD calls the plugin's createWidget() function. \target BuildingandInstallingthePlugin \section1 Building and Installing the Plugin \section2 A Simple Plugin The \l{Custom Widget Plugin Example} demonstrates a simple \QD plugin. The \c{.pro} file for a plugin must specify the headers and sources for both the custom widget and the plugin interface. Typically, this file only has to specify that the plugin's project is to be built as a library, but with specific plugin support for \QD. This is done with the following declarations: \snippet examples/designer/customwidgetplugin/customwidgetplugin.pro 1 If Qt is configured to build in both debug and release modes, \QD will be built in release mode. When this occurs, it is necessary to ensure that plugins are also built in release mode. To do this, include the following declaration in the plugin's \c{.pro} file: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 3 If plugins are built in a mode that is incompatible with \QD, they will not be loaded and installed. For more information about plugins, see the \l{plugins-howto.html}{Plugins HOWTO} document. It is also necessary to ensure that the plugin is installed together with other \QD widget plugins: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 4 The \c $[QT_INSTALL_PLUGINS] variable is a placeholder to the location of the installed Qt plugins. You can configure \QD to look for plugins in other locations by setting the \c QT_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable before running the application. \note \QD will look for a \c designer subdirectory in each path supplied. See QCoreApplication::libraryPaths() for more information about customizing paths for libraries and plugins with Qt applications. \section2 Splitting up the Plugin In a real world scenario, you do not want to have dependencies of the application making use of the custom widgets to the \QD headers and libraries as introduced by the simple approach explained above. There are two ways to resolve this: \list \i Create a \c{.pri} file that contains the headers sources and sources of the custom widget: \code INCLUDEPATH += $$PWD HEADERS += $$PWD/analogclock.h SOURCES += $$PWD/analogclock.cpp \endcode This file would then be included by the \c{.pro} file of the plugin and the application: \code include(customwidget.pri) \endcode Running \c{qmake -Wall} on the \c{.pro} files causes a warning to be printed if an included \c{.pri} file cannot be found. \i Create a standalone shared library containing the custom widgets only as described in \l{sharedlibrary.html}{Creating Shared Libraries}. This library would then be used by the application as well as by the \QD plugin. Care must be taken to ensure that the plugin can locate the library at run-time. \endlist \section1 Related Examples For more information on using custom widgets in \QD, refer to the \l{designer/customwidgetplugin}{Custom Widget Plugin} and \l{designer/worldtimeclockplugin}{World Time Clock Plugin} examples for more information about using custom widgets in \QD. Also, you can use the QDesignerCustomWidgetCollectionInterface class to combine several custom widgets into a single library. */ /*! \page designer-creating-custom-widgets-extensions.html \previouspage Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer \nextpage Qt Designer's UI File Format \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \title Creating Custom Widget Extensions Once you have a custom widget plugin for \QD, you can provide it with the expected behavior and functionality within \QD's workspace, using custom widget extensions. \section1 Extension Types There are several available types of extensions in \QD. You can use all of these extensions in the same pattern, only replacing the respective extension base class. QDesignerContainerExtension is necessary when implementing a custom multi-page container. \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-manual-taskmenuextension.png \i \bold{QDesignerTaskMenuExtension} QDesignerTaskMenuExtension is useful for custom widgets. It provides an extension that allows you to add custom menu entries to \QD's task menu. The \l{designer/taskmenuextension}{Task Menu Extension} example illustrates how to use this class. \row \i \inlineimage designer-manual-containerextension.png \i \bold{QDesignerContainerExtension} QDesignerContainerExtension is necessary when implementing a custom multi-page container. It provides an extension that allows you to add and delete pages for a multi-page container plugin in \QD. The \l{designer/containerextension}{Container Extension} example further explains how to use this class. \note It is not possible to add custom per-page properties for some widgets (e.g., QTabWidget) due to the way they are implemented. \endtable \table \row \i \inlineimage designer-manual-membersheetextension.png \i \bold{QDesignerMemberSheetExtension} The QDesignerMemberSheetExtension class allows you to manipulate a widget's member functions displayed when connecting signals and slots. \row \i \inlineimage designer-manual-propertysheetextension.png \i \bold{QDesignerPropertySheetExtension, QDesignerDynamicPropertySheetExtension} These extension classes allow you to control how a widget's properties are displayed in \QD's property editor. \endtable \omit \row \o \o \bold {QDesignerScriptExtension} The QDesignerScriptExtension class allows you to define script snippets that are executed when a form is loaded. The extension is primarily intended to be used to set up the internal states of custom widgets. \endtable \endomit \QD uses the QDesignerPropertySheetExtension and the QDesignerMemberSheetExtension classes to feed its property and signal and slot editors. Whenever a widget is selected in its workspace, \QD will query for the widget's property sheet extension; likewise, whenever a connection between two widgets is requested, \QD will query for the widgets' member sheet extensions. \warning All widgets have default property and member sheets. If you implement custom property sheet or member sheet extensions, your custom extensions will override the default sheets. \section1 Creating an Extension To create an extension you must inherit both QObject and the appropriate base class, and reimplement its functions. Since we are implementing an interface, we must ensure that it is made known to the meta object system using the Q_INTERFACES() macro in the extension class's definition. For example: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 7 This enables \QD to use the qobject_cast() function to query for supported interfaces using a QObject pointer only. \section1 Exposing an Extension to Qt Designer In \QD the extensions are not created until they are required. For this reason, when implementing extensions, you must subclass QExtensionFactory to create a class that is able to make instances of your extensions. Also, you must register your factory with \QD's extension manager; the extension manager handles the construction of extensions. When an extension is requested, \QD's extension manager will run through its registered factories calling QExtensionFactory::createExtension() for each of them until it finds one that is able to create the requested extension for the selected widget. This factory will then make an instance of the extension. \image qtdesignerextensions.png \section2 Creating an Extension Factory The QExtensionFactory class provides a standard extension factory, but it can also be used as an interface for custom extension factories. The purpose is to reimplement the QExtensionFactory::createExtension() function, making it able to create your extension, such as a \l{designer/containerextension}{MultiPageWidget} container extension. You can either create a new QExtensionFactory and reimplement the QExtensionFactory::createExtension() function: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 8 or you can use an existing factory, expanding the QExtensionFactory::createExtension() function to enable the factory to create your custom extension as well: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 9 \section2 Accessing Qt Designer's Extension Manager When implementing a custom widget plugin, you must subclass the QDesignerCustomWidgetInterface to expose your plugin to \QD. This is covered in more detail in the \l{Creating Custom Widgets for Qt Designer} section. The registration of an extension factory is typically made in the QDesignerCustomWidgetInterface::initialize() function: \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_designer-manual.qdoc 10 The \c formEditor parameter in the QDesignerCustomWidgetInterface::initialize() function is a pointer to \QD's current QDesignerFormEditorInterface object. You must use the QDesignerFormEditorInterface::extensionManager() function to retrieve an interface to \QD's extension manager. Then you use the QExtensionManager::registerExtensions() function to register your custom extension factory. \section1 Related Examples For more information on creating custom widget extensions in \QD, refer to the \l{designer/taskmenuextension}{Task Menu Extension} and \l{designer/containerextension}{Container Extension} examples. */ /*! \page designer-ui-file-format.html \previouspage Creating Custom Widget Extensions \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \title Qt Designer's UI File Format The \c UI file format used by \QD is described by the \l{http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema}{XML schema} presented below, which we include for your convenience. Be aware that the format may change in future Qt releases. \quotefile tools/designer/data/ui4.xsd */ /*! \page designer-recursive-shadow-casting.html \title Implementation of the Recursive Shadow Casting Algorithm in Qt Designer \contentspage {Qt Designer Manual}{Contents} \ingroup licensing \brief License information for contributions to specific parts of the Qt Designer source code. \legalese Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). \BR Copyright (C) 2005 Bjoern Bergstroem Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, modify, market, reproduce, grant sublicenses and distribute subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. These files are provided AS IS with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE WARRANTY OF DESIGN, MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. \endlegalese */