Adding Scrollbar to JList - scrollbar

I'm trying to add a scrollbar to a JList (which uses a custom data model). Adding a JScrollPane actually hides the JList, instead of adding a scrollbar. When I run the code with the scrollbar, the JList is not visible, and I cannot see the data.
playlistField = new JList(playlist); // playlist is a data model
playlistField.setLocation(32, 220-36);
playlistField.setSize(350,120);
playlistField.setVisible(true);
this.add(playlistField);
listScrollPane = new JScrollPane(playlistField, JScrollPane.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_ALWAYS, JScrollPane.HORIZONTAL_SCROLLBAR_ALWAYS);
Commenting out the listScrollPane = ... line makes the JList visible again and it works as expected.
What did I miss?

You need to add the scrollpane to the container, and not the list.
In your current example, by adding the list in the scrollpane, it removes the list from its original container, since a component can have only one parent.

Related

How can I exchange an item and a spacer?

In qt, I have a form that contains among other things, a group with
A combo box
a checkbox
a spacer
a button
Based on some logic, I want sometimes to show another combo box... Where the spacer is, but smaller.
When I add it though, everything resizes automatically
I don't see a way to make it invisible, and yet keep items of the same size when I make it visible again.
I tried making it fixed size... But unless I use fixed sizes and positioning for everything, which I think is a bad idea, the items still move around when I change visibility.
It seems silly... But how can I make my little combo box show up instead of the spacer not next to it ? Spacers don't seem to have a name...
I would do
combo.setVisible(condition);
Spacer.setVisible(!condition);
Very easy... Except how do I access the spacer from code ?
My suggestion is to use a container QWidget instead of the spacer. Here is how it will look:
A combo box
a checkbox
a widget-container
a button
Widget-container is a QWidget with fixed size. Put your combo-box there and it will maintain it's size when you show/hide the combo-box.
Regarding your question (You will not need it but just to know in the future):
how do I access the spacer from code
You can create a spacer from code like this:
QSpacerItem* spacer = new QSpacerItem(0, 15, QSizePolicy::Fixed, QSizePolicy::Fixed);
layout->addItem(spacer);
...
Also you can get it from a layout if you know its index:
QLayoutItem* item = layout->itemAt(index);
But there is no such method as show/hide for layout items.

How do i resize the contents of a QScrollArea as more widgets are placed inside

I have a QScrollArea Widget, which starts empty;
It has a vertical layout, with a QGridLayout, and a vertical spacer to keep it at the top, and prevent it from stretching over the whole scroll area;
Elsewhere in the program, there is a QTextEdit, which when changed, has its contents scanned for "species" elements, and then they are added to the QGridLayout. Any species elements which have been removed are removed too. This bit works;
I have turned the vertical scrollbar on all the time, so that when it appears it does not sit on top of the other stuff in there. Note that the scroll bar is larger than the scroll box already though, despite not needing to be.
This is the problem. The scroll area seems to be preset, and i cannot change it. If i add more rows to the QGridLayout, the scroll area doesn't increase in size.
Instead, it stays the same size, and squeezes the QGridLayout, making it look ugly (at first);
And then after adding even more it becomes unusable;
Note that again, the scroll bar is still the same size as in previous images. The first two images are from Qt Designer, the subsequent 3 are from the program running.
If I resize the window so that the QScrollArea grows, then I see this:
Indicating that there's some layout inside the scroll area that is not resizing properly.
My question is; what do I need to do to make the scrollable area of the widget resize dynamically as I add and remove from the QGridLayout?
If you're coming here from Google and not having luck with the accepted answer, that's because you're missing the other secret invocation: QScrollArea::setWidget. You must create and explicitly identify a single widget which is to be scrolled. It's not enough to just add the item as a child! Adding multiple items directly to the ScrollArea will also not work.
This script demonstrates a simple working example of QScrollArea:
from PySide.QtGui import *
app = QApplication([])
scroll = QScrollArea()
scroll.setWidgetResizable(True) # CRITICAL
inner = QFrame(scroll)
inner.setLayout(QVBoxLayout())
scroll.setWidget(inner) # CRITICAL
for i in range(40):
b = QPushButton(inner)
b.setText(str(i))
inner.layout().addWidget(b)
scroll.show()
app.exec_()
The documentation provide an answer :
widgetResizable : bool
This property holds whether the scroll area should resize the view widget.
If this property is set to false (the default), the scroll area honors the size of its widget.
Set it to true.
Why don't you use a QListView for your rows, it will manage all the issues for you? Just make sure that after you add it you click on the Class (top right window of designer) and assign a layout or it wont expand properly.
I use a QLIstWidget inside a QScrollArea to make a scrollable image list
Try this for adding other objects to the list, this is how I add an image to the list.
QImage& qim = myclass.getQTImage();
QImage iconImage = copyImageToSquareRegion(qim, ui->display_image->palette().color(QWidget::backgroundRole()));
QListWidgetItem* pItem = new QListWidgetItem(QIcon(QPixmap::fromImage(iconImage)), NULL);
pItem->setData(Qt::UserRole, "thumb" + QString::number(ui->ImageThumbList->count())); // probably not necessary for you
QString strTooltip = "a tooltip"
pItem->setToolTip(strTooltip);
ui->ImageThumbList->addItem(pItem);
Update on Artfunkel's answer:
Here's a PySide6 demo that uses a "Populate" button to run the for loop adding items to the scroll area. Each button will also delete itself when clicked.
from PySide6.QtWidgets import *
app = QApplication([])
scroll = QScrollArea()
scroll.setWidgetResizable(True) # CRITICAL
inner = QFrame(scroll)
inner.setLayout(QVBoxLayout())
scroll.setWidget(inner) # CRITICAL
def on_remove_widget(button):
button.deleteLater()
def populate():
for i in range(40):
b = QPushButton(inner)
b.setText(str(i))
b.clicked.connect(b.deleteLater)
inner.layout().addWidget(b)
b = QPushButton(inner)
b.setText("Populate")
b.clicked.connect(populate)
inner.layout().addWidget(b)
scroll.show()
app.exec()

How do I resize the dropdown of a combobox along with the combo box?

Background:
I am doing some UI work where I allow the user to programatically add and resize controls on a canvas.
Problem:
When resizing a combo box through AS the dropdown stays at the same width as the first time it drops down. So user places combo box on the page, clicks the down arrow, sees the options, selects an option or clicks down arrow again to close, resizes the width of the drop down, clicks the down arrow. Now drop down is the same width as original.
Have tried simple things like setting the width of the dropdown specifically and invalidating display list but it still doesn't work.
Example:
Code Example pending
While trimming my code down to an example I solved my problem. A combobox has a dropdownWidth property. I was trying to set this myComboBox.dropdownWidth = newWidth, which doesn't work (not entirely sure why, didn't dig into the SDK). However if I change my code to myComboBox.dropdown.width = newWidth it actually goes to the dropdown element and re-sizes it directly which does work.
comboBox.dropdown.width did not work for me. I had to use
comboBox.dropdown.percentWidth = 100;
It seems to work without having to call invalidateSize()
In the ComboBox, overriding the set dataProvider and performing the following seemed to work, because the dataProvider field is bound to the collectionChange event.
ComboBox.calculatePreferredSizeFromData(count:int):Object
override public function set dataProvider(value:Object):void {
super.dataProvider = value;
var size:Object = calculatePreferredSizeFromData(dataProvider.length);
this.dropdownWidth = size.width;
this.dropdown.width = this.dropdownWidth;
this.invalidateSize();
}

Auto-sizing and positioning in Flex

I am working on a flex app that uses XML templates to dynamically create DisplayObjects. These templates define different layouts that can be used for each page of content in the app (ie , 2 columns, 3 columns etc etc). The administrator can select from one of these and populate each area with their content.
The templates add one of 3 types of DisplayObject - HBox, VBox or a third component - LibraryContentContainer (an mxml component that is defined as part of the app) - which is effectively a canvas element with a TextArea inside.
The problem that I am getting is that I need each of these areas to automatically resize to fit the length of the content but don't seem to be able to find an effective way to do so.
In the LibraryContentContainer, when the value of the TextArea is set, I am calling .validateNow() on the LibraryContentContainer. I then set the height property on both the TextArea and LibraryContentContainer to match the textHeight property of the TextArea.
In the following example, this is the LibraryContentContainer, viewer is the TextArea and the value property of the TextArea is bound to this.__Value. v is the variable containing the content for the textarea
this.__Value = v;
this.validateNow();
this.viewer.height = this.viewer.textHeight;
this.height = this.viewer.height;
This works to a degree in that the TextArea grows or shrinks depending on the length of content, but it's still not great - sometimes there are still vertical scrollbars even tho the size of the TextArea has grown.
Anyone got any ideas?
Thanks
Adam
I think the problem lies not with your dynamically added components, but with the component they're being added to. How is the height of this component being determined? If you set verticalScrollPolicy and horizontalScrollPolicy on this container to off, do your scrollbars disappear? If that's the case, then you'll need to look at how this component is sized rather than your hbox, vbox, or whatever it is you're adding.

Making a Flex DataGrid scroll smoothly

I've noticed that the default behaviour for a DataGrid's vertical scroll bar is to scroll one row at a time. This is all well and good when the rows are all uniform and small (e.g. displaying a single line of text), but gets really ugly as soon as you have rows with variable heights.
I'm curious, is there a way to make DataGrid scrolling "smooth"? For instance, is there a way to have the DataGrid scroll by a set number of pixels, lines of text, etc. rather than scrolling one row at a time?
So far, the only solution I've managed to come up with is to place the DataGrid in a Canvas and have the Canvas do the scrolling instead of the DataGrid. The issue with this approach, though, is that as soon as the Canvas scrolls far enough, the DataGrid headers scroll off-screen. Ideally, I'd like to get the smooth-scrolling nature of the Canvas, but also keep the DataGrid headers visible. Is that possible?
The way that ItemRenderer's work in Flex 3 makes smooth scrolling difficult to achieve. Basically Flex recycles item renderers scrolled off of the top of the list as the display objects used for new data at the bottom of the list. Adobe's implementation of most list components in Flex 3 creates and adds these items as they come on to the screen rather than just off the screen, so they "pop in" and smooth scrolling isn't available. I'm not sure why they couldn't have done it in a similar manner for items +/- one position above or below the current scroll pane, but they didn't, and we're stuck with sticky scrolling by default.
Work-arounds do exist, though the one you've noted (dropping the datagrid into a canvas) negates the display-object saving intention of item renderers and incurs a performance cost. This will be fixed for most list-based Flex components in Flex 4, though it won't be fixed immediately for DataGrid. The DataGrid / AdvancedDataGrid component is maintained by a separate team based in India, last time I heard, and so it tends to be a bit behind the rest of the SDK.
I'd recommend trying something similar to this implementation of a smooth-scrolling list by Alex Harui. I'm not sure exactly how well it'd work for DataGrid or AdvancedDataGrid, but this is the most intuitive technique I can think of for making the list scroll correctly.
Try this... It's still based on Alex's code that was mentioned above. His should still be a great start for removing the snap-to-row behavior. Original source:
http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui/2008/03/smooth_scrolling_list.html
Alex's original some code for smooth vertical scrolling but that was not an issue I had with the DataGrid. It was smooth scrolling horizontally that I needed. I am using the DataGrid in an unorthodox manner for analyzing plain text reports output by our database (great way of providing visual feedback on a document). The code below allows content to go off screen and the user can scroll without that snap-to-column behavior.
You can adapt this to use the same math routines for vertical scrolling and then it will make scrolling possible and ignore the snap to row behavior. In particular switch the usage of the listContent.move method to move the contents vertically and use a inverse of the rounded pixel value you calculate from the vertical scroll bar (as opposed to my using the horizontal).
This method is bit simpler than Alex's method from the link above - a lot less code so try adapting and see how it works.
override protected function scrollHandler(event:Event):void
{
// Override the default scroll behavior to provide smooth horizontal scrolling and not the usual "snap-to-column" behavior
var scrEvt:ScrollEvent = event as ScrollEvent;
if(scrEvt.direction == ScrollEventDirection.HORIZONTAL) {
// Get individual components of a scroll bar for measuring and get a horizontal position to use
var scrDownArrow:DisplayObject = horizontalScrollBar.getChildAt(3);
var sctThumb:DisplayObject = horizontalScrollBar.getChildAt(2);
// I replaced maxHorizontalScrollPosition in Alex's code with "1300" to fix my exact application. In other situations you may finding using some property or different value is more appropriate. Don't rely on my choice.
var hPos:Number = Math.round((sctThumb.y - scrDownArrow.height) / (scrDownArrow.y - sctThumb.height - scrDownArrow.height) * 1300);
// Inverse the position to scroll the content to the left for large reports
listContent.move(hPos * -1, listContent.y);
}
// Go ahead and use the default handler for vertical scrolling
else {
super.scrollHandler(event);
}
}

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