QScrollArea: auto-scroll to newly added widget - qt

it's not the first time that I want a scroll area which behaves like the following (imagine a log or chat window, but too complex to use a simple QTextBrowser):
I want to add multiple widgets, which appear one below the other (like when placed in a QVBoxLayout)
Each widget within this layout should have a fixed size or a height-for-width (like a simple label)
The scroll area should auto-scroll to the most recently added one
(optional) When there is space left (scroll bar not yet enabled), the contents should be aligned to bottom
Using QScrollArea:
My attempt in the past was using a QScrollArea using a QVBoxLayout inside. But this seems to be not as simple as I thought: Whenever I add a widget to the layout, the layout doesn't resize the scroll area content widget immediately, resulting in a delayed adjustment of the contents. For one short moment, the widgets contained in the layout are resized so that the total size equals the total size before the add operation, resulting in a too small size per widget. Also, scrolling to the newly added widget is thus not possible until the layout corrected its size to the new total size of widgets, so even a QTimer::singleShot(0, ...) doesn't help here. Even with a timeout of 20 or so, there are situations in which the layout needs more time to resize. It's not deterministic, and thus far away from a nice solution.
In order to get the bottom alignment behaviour, I initially place a spacer item in the layout. It won't require any space as soon as there is no space left and scrolling gets enabled.
Using QListView:
As my items are too complex, they need to be QWidgets. They can't have the focus, aren't selectable, so an item-based solution seems to be just "the wrong way". Also, this solution sounds too "heavy".
I just can't believe that there is no easy way, so I think I just haven't seen it yet!

QListView should be fine. You claim that your items are static, there's no interaction with them: no focus, no selection. It'd seem that a QWidget is an overkill for such items. You only need something that has a fixed size and can draw itself. That is precisely what delegates in the Qt's model-view system are for. Just implement one or more QAbstractItemDelegates for your items, and provide an implementation of a model for the data they will be rendering. The QAbstractItemView is is already a QAbstractScrollArea!
If you want to paint HTML within a delegate, it's easy to do -- again, QWidget is an overkill for a static display! There is a very food reason why it's "hard" to use QWidget for this -- the API guides you to the correct solution. Assuming your model contains html for each item, here's how you can paint it. You can go fancy with the sizeHint, of course, and should be caching the text document, ideally storing it in the model I'd think.
void MyDelegate::paint(QPainter* p, const QStyleOptionViewItem & opt, const QModelIndex & index) const
{
QTextDocument doc;
doc.setHtml(index.data().toString());
doc.drawContents(p, QRect(QPoint(0,0), sizeHint(opt, index)));
}
QSize MyDelegate::sizeHint(const QStyleOptionViewItem &, const QModelIndex &) const
{
return QSize(100, 200);
}

Related

Resizing Layout equal to MainWindow

When I run my program it will display all content properly, and when I resizing the main window, the layout along with all associated widgets remain fixed, rather than resizing with the main window. I used to increase my all widget and listWidget respect to window computer resolution size but still this not one work properly.
I used this one code finding the system height and width.
QWidget widget;
widget.resize(widget.width(), widget.minimumHeight());
QRect rec = QApplication::desktop()->screenGeometry();
int h = rec.height();
int w = rec.width();
// Increasing the listwidget size
ui->listWidget->setFixedHeight(h);
ui->listWidget->setFixedWidth(w);
//increasing the button size
ui->pushButton->setFixedHeight(h0.2);
ui->pushButton->setFixedWidth(w0.2);
At this link you will find two screenshots that illustrate my problem.
Please resolve to solve my problem. Thanks very much in advance.
When defining the layout of your windows and forms in Qt Designer you have to define each element of your form in advance, in order to have a working layout.
This solution is based on the screenshots provided in the comments to the question. Follow these steps:
Add an empty widget to the central area of your form, if there is nothing there. It will be used as a placeholder for the controls you will add later, and of course you can replace it with whatever widget you want. But you need it there to define a proper layout.
In the property panel, set the horizontal QSizePolicy of this widget to MinimumExpanding.
Add an horizontal spacer to the left side of your progress bar.
Define a minimum/maximum width for the white widget on the left (I guess it's a text area). As an example set the maximum width to 200
pixels.
Make the same for the QTabWidget on the right.
Give a minimum height to the Groupbox on top.
Then give the grid layout to the MainWindow.
You should get something similar in the designer view (I use a dark theme, yours will have different colors of course):
If you complete all steps you should have a nicely resizing window.
For the future: remember to integrally define your layouts, also using placeholder widgets when needed, read carefully the documentation about the widgets size policies (there are several, you need to play with them to fully understand each one) and keep in mind that Qt uses a container based approach which is different, as an example from those used by the .Net framework that relies on the concept of anchors.
EDIT : to answer questions in the comments
You will need to add a layout to any widget that contains other widgets, e.g. adding controls to your groupbox will require to give it a grid, horizontal or vertical layout in order to scale nicely on resize. Again use spacers and size policies to make it look the way you want. If you need to add or remove controls, or change their positions, you may need to brake the layout, rearrange and then set it again.
You can also select groups of widgets and give them a layout e.g. vertical, than another group and set them horizontal and so on... then give a grid layout to the container widget to build a compound layout.
There are endless possibilities, you just need to practice and go through trial and error as for everything else...
You can also do it all programmatically, check the Qt widgets documentation for this. But for complex layouts I would not go that way: it's a lot of code... and you have to compile and run to test every modification.
Using the QtCreator, within the designer you can simply right-click on the parent-widget and add a Grid-Layout.
This one resizes it's children to it's dimensions.

how to specify the height of scrollbar in QTreeView

just like the title described, when i redraw the scrollbar in QTreeView which has a header(QHeaderView), but the scrollbar's height is the entire height of QTreeView, and i want to let the scrollbar's height equals the QTreeView's height minus the header's height.just like the pic below:
A solution for your problem might be setting the location of the vertical scrollbar to a constant_offset value acquired from the QHeaderView (on the y axis).
This could be done by subclassing the QTreeView like so:
class MyTreeView : public QTreeView
{
public:
MyTreeView(QWidget* parent = nullptr): QTreeView(parent){}
void updateVertScrollBar()
{
auto* ptr = verticalScrollBar();
QRect rect = ptr->geometry();
rect.setTop(header()->height());
ptr->setGeometry(rect);
}
void resizeEvent(QResizeEvent* ev) override
{
QTreeView::resizeEvent(ev);
updateVertScrollBar();
}
};
Depending on the sizePolicy the updateVertScrollBar method could be called just after data is filled or as presented in the sample implementation the update can occur for each resizeEvent - which should cover various resizing performed to the widget.
EDIT
Additionally removing the blank space left from the shrunk scrollbar would be tricky. First denote that the QTreeView is built from a viewport widget and scrollbars (among others). The issue you now see comes from the fact that viewport plus vertical scrollbar widths (if visible) should match and this is calculated internally.
I stated that it's tricky since there is a load of stuff happening when you try to force the size of these components. Some updates are called in-place some are called through the event loop. You can check this to get more detaile info about the concept. Similar approach is probably applied to QTreeView.
Basically what you would need to do is to stretch the viewport width. This should be probably done during the resizeEvent but calling from there methods like viewport()->setGeometry() might not end well - you might get caught into a loop. You might try blockSignals but I'm not sure this would help. In general if you want to mess with the internals of a given Qt widget you should go through it's implementation at least briefly.

What is the simplest way to get notified whenever the user scrolls a QScrollArea?

Just as a QPushButton provides a default clicked() signal, I expected QScrollArea to have a sliderChanged() or similar signal. Interestingly, the QScrollBar does have such a signal.
All I would like to do is to know what part of the huge widget inside the scroll area is visible, whenever the user scrolls it.
There are many solutions, none of which seem elegant to me:
subclass QScrollArea
subclass the widget inside the scroll area, and re-implement its paint event.
create a custom veiwport, using QScrollBar
periodically poll the position of the widget inside the scroll area. This seems to be the worst solution.
Is there a way without subclassing?
There is QAbstractSlider::valueChanged() signal that is emitted when the slider value has changed, with the new slider value as argument. This will notify you as soon as you scroll your view.
WRT the second problem, neither of mentioned points necessary. You need to:
1) Get the position of inner widget (if any) related to the scroll area:
QPoint p = scrollArea->widget()->pos();
It use to be a negative coordinates if you scrolled your view down/right or null without scrolling.
2) Get the size of the visible area
QSize s = scrollArea->viewport()->size();
With these two values you can construct a QRect that will represent the visible area of your inner widget.

Getting rid of unnecessary scrollbar in QScrollArea

I'm working on a Configuration QDialog. It has several categories (General, Appearance, etc.) that get loaded when the user clicks on them. Each category has its own page. These pages are separate classes in their own right (each has its own ui, cpp, and h). When the Preferences window loads, the pages get instantiated and are loaded into a QStackedWidget. The Stackedwidget is then placed into a QScrollArea so it can scroll if necessary.
However, there is a problem. Ever since I added the QStackedWidget, the QScrollArea always has a vertical scrollbar even when the current page is short enough not to need one: (picture shows the shortest page)
The ScrollArea vertical scroll policy is set to Qt::ScrollBarAsNeeded so logically it should only show a bar if the page is larger than the viewable area.
Here's what I already tried to fix this:
Setting the scroll policy to Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff. While this gets rid of the scrollbar, its unacceptable since it doesn't let the user know they need to scroll on long pages.
Setting the Minimum/Maximum heights for the QStackedwidget. This makes the scrollbar go away if I set it for a low enough value, but it is unacceptable since it causes some of the widgets to have a squished appearance.
I know the problem has something to do with the QStackedWidget but since this is the first time I've used QStackedWidget I’m not sure what it is. I've also noticed the scroll is always for the same amount; i.e. the scrollable area is always the same size no matter how large/small the page widget is. For some reason, it's slightly larger than the longest page. At first I thought the vertical spacers I put at at the bottom of each page to tighten up the layout were causing this, but taking them out didn't fix it.
Update: Here's the code that controls the Stackedwidget:
void Newconfig::on_Categories_currentItemChanged(QTreeWidgetItem *current)
{
QModelIndex index=ui->Categories->currentIndex();
int idx=index.row();
QString category=current->text(0);
this->setWindowTitle("Preferences -- " + category);
if (stack->currentWidget() != 0) {
stack->currentWidget()->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::Ignored,
QSizePolicy::Ignored);
}
stack->setCurrentIndex(idx);
stack->currentWidget()->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::Expanding,
QSizePolicy::Expanding);
adjustSize();
}
The QStackedWidget takes the size of the largest widget added to it. In your case, the largest page in your preferences dialog is what is influencing the size of the QStackedWidget and is thus forcing the scroll area to show its scroll bar, even when it doesn't appear to be necessary.
To get around this, you can create a slot that is triggered right before you change the current widget in the QStackedWidget that sets the size policy of the page you are leaving to QSizePolicy::Ignored and the size policy of the page you are about to show to whatever you desire for that page -- QSizePolicy::Expanding for instance. An example of this technique is detailed on this page. There's a lot of code in the example, but the important part is here:
void changeCurrent(int idx)
{
if (stackWidget->currentWidget() !=0) {
stackWidget->currentWidget()->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::Ignored,
QSizePolicy::Ignored);
}
stackWidget->setCurrentIndex(idx);
stackWidget->currentWidget()->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::Expanding,
QSizePolicy::Expanding);
adjustSize();
}
This function is called to change the current index on the QStackedWidget. It causes the page that was just being viewed to have a size policy that has no influence on the overall size of the QStackedWidget and the page that is about to be viewed to have a size policy of consequence.

Resizing QT's QTextEdit to Match Text Height: maximumViewportSize()

I am trying to use a QTextEdit widget inside of a form containing several QT widgets. The form itself sits inside a QScrollArea that is the central widget for a window. My intent is that any necessary scrolling will take place in the main QScrollArea (rather than inside any widgets), and any widgets inside will automatically resize their height to hold their contents.
I have tried to implement the automatic resizing of height with a QTextEdit, but have run into an odd issue. I created a sub-class of QTextEdit and reimplemented sizeHint() like this:
QSize OperationEditor::sizeHint() const {
QSize sizehint = QTextBrowser::sizeHint();
sizehint.setHeight(this->fitted_height);
return sizehint;
}
this->fitted_height is kept up-to-date via this slot that is wired to the QTextEdit's "contentsChanged()" signal:
void OperationEditor::fitHeightToDocument() {
this->document()->setTextWidth(this->viewport()->width());
QSize document_size(this->document()->size().toSize());
this->fitted_height = document_size.height();
this->updateGeometry();
}
The size policy of the QTextEdit sub-class is:
this->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::MinimumExpanding, QSizePolicy::Preferred);
I took this approach after reading this post.
Here is my problem:
As the QTextEdit gradually resizes to fill the window, it stops getting larger and starts scrolling within the QTextEdit, no matter what height is returned from sizeHint(). If I initially have sizeHint() return some large constant number, then the QTextEdit is very big and is contained nicely within the outer QScrollArea, as one would expect. However, if sizeHint gradually adjusts the size of the QTextEdit rather than just making it really big to start, then it tops out when it fills the current window and starts scrolling instead of growing.
I have traced this problem to be that, no matter what my sizeHint() returns, it will never resize the QTextEdit larger than the value returned from maximumViewportSize(), which is inherited from QAbstractScrollArea. Note that this is not the same number as viewport()->maximumSize(). I am unable to figure out how to set that value.
Looking at QT's source code, maximumViewportSize() is returning "the size of the viewport as if the scroll bars had no valid scrolling range." This value is basically computed as the current size of the widget minus (2 * frameWidth + margins) plus any scrollbar widths/heights. This does not make a lot of sense to me, and it's not clear to me why that number would be used anywhere in a way that supercede's the sub-class's sizeHint() implementation. Also, it does seem odd that the single "frameWidth" integer is used in computing both the width and the height.
Can anyone please shed some light on this? I suspect that my poor understanding of QT's layout engine is to blame here.
Edit: after initially posting this, I had the idea to reimplement maximumViewportSize() to return the same thing as sizeHint(). Unfortunately, this did not work as I still have the same problem.
I have solved this issue. There were 2 things that I had to do to get it to work:
Walk up the widget hierarchy and make sure all the size policies made sense to ensure that if any child widget wanted to be big/small, then the parent widget would want to be the same thing.
This is the main source of the fix. It turns out that since the QTextEdit is inside a QFrame that is the main widget in a QScrollArea, the QScrollArea has a constraint that it will not resize the internal widget unless the "widgetResizable" property is true. The documentation for that is here: http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qscrollarea.html#widgetResizable-prop. The documentation was not clear to me until I played around with this setting and got it to work. From the docs, it seems that this property only deals with times where the main scroll area wants to resize a widget (i.e. from parent to child). It actually means that if the main widget in the scroll area wants to ever resize (i.e. child to parent), then this setting has to be set to true.
So, the moral of the story is that the QTextEdit code was correct in overriding sizeHint, but the QScrollArea was ignoring the value returned from the main frame's sizeHint.
Yay! It Works!
You may try setting minimumSize property of the QTextEdit to see if that force the layout to grow.
I don't understand most of Qt's layout scheme but setting minimum and maximum size pretty much does what I want it to do. Well, most of the time anyways.

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