/**************************************************************************** ** ** Documentation for creating custom styles with TQStyle ** ** Copyright (C) 1992-2008 Trolltech ASA. All rights reserved. ** ** This file is part of the TQt GUI Toolkit. ** ** This file may be used under the terms of the GNU General ** Public License versions 2.0 or 3.0 as published by the Free ** Software Foundation and appearing in the files LICENSE.GPL2 ** and LICENSE.GPL3 included in the packaging of this file. ** Alternatively you may (at your option) use any later version ** of the GNU General Public License if such license has been ** publicly approved by Trolltech ASA (or its successors, if any) ** and the KDE Free TQt Foundation. ** ** Please review the following information to ensure GNU General ** Public Licensing requirements will be met: ** http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/opensource/. ** If you are unsure which license is appropriate for your use, please ** review the following information: ** http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/licensingoverview ** or contact the sales department at sales@trolltech.com. ** ** This file may be used under the terms of the Q Public License as ** defined by Trolltech ASA and appearing in the file LICENSE.QPL ** included in the packaging of this file. Licensees holding valid Qt ** Commercial licenses may use this file in accordance with the Qt ** Commercial License Agreement provided with the Software. ** ** This file is provided "AS IS" with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, ** INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR ** A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Trolltech reserves all rights not granted ** herein. ** **********************************************************************/ /*! \page customstyles.html \title Style overview A style in TQt implements the look and feel found in a GUI for a particular platform. For example, Windows platforms may use the Windows or Windows-XP style, Unix platforms may use the Motif style, and so on. This is a short guide that describes the steps that are necessary to get started creating and using custom styles with the TQt 3.x style API. First, we go through the steps necessary to create a style: \list 1 \i Pick a base style to inherit from. \i Re-implement the necessary functions in the derived class. \endlist Then we explain how to use the new style from within your own applications, or as a plugin that can be used by existing Qt applications. \section1 Creating a custom style \section2 1. Pick a base style to inherit from. The first step is to pick one of the base styles provided with TQt to build your custom style from. The choice will depend on what look and feel you are trying to achieve. We recommend that you choose from the QWindowsStyle derived classes or the QMotifStyle derived classes. These are the two base look and feel classes in the TQt style engine. Inheriting directly from QCommonStyle is also an option if you want to start almost from scratch when implementing your style. In this simple example we will inherit from QWindowsStyle. \section2 2. Re-implement the necessary functions in your derived class. Depending on which parts of the base style you want to change, you must re-implement the functions that are used to draw those parts of the interface. If you take a look at the \l{TQStyle} documentation, you will find a list of the different primitives, controls and complex controls. In this example we will first change the look of the standard arrows that are used in the QWindowsStyle. The arrows are PrimitiveElements that are drawn by the drawPrimitive() function, so we need to re-implement that function. We need the following class declaration: \code #include class CustomStyle : public QWindowsStyle { TQ_OBJECT public: CustomStyle(); ~CustomStyle(); void drawPrimitive( PrimitiveElement pe, TQPainter *p, const QRect & r, const TQColorGroup & cg, SFlags flags = Style_Default, const TQStyleOption & = TQStyleOption::Default ) const; private: // Disabled copy constructor and operator= CustomStyle( const CustomStyle & ); CustomStyle& operator=( const CustomStyle & ); }; \endcode Note that we disable the copy constructor and the '=' operator for our style. TQObject is the base class for all style classes in Qt, and a TQObject inherently cannot be copied since there are some aspects of it that are not copyable. From the TQStyle docs we see that \c PE_ArrowUp, \c PE_ArrowDown, \c PE_ArrowLeft and \c PE_ArrowRight are the primitives we need to do something with. We get the following in our drawPrimitive() function: \code CustomStyle::CustomStyle() { } CustomStyle::~CustomStyle() { } void CustomStyle::drawPrimitive( PrimitiveElement pe, TQPainter * p, const QRect & r, const TQColorGroup & cg, SFlags flags, const TQStyleOption & opt ) const { // we are only interested in the arrows if (pe >= PE_ArrowUp && pe <= PE_ArrowLeft) { QPointArray pa( 3 ); // make the arrow cover half the area it is supposed to be // painted on int x = r.x(); int y = r.y(); int w = r.width() / 2; int h = r.height() / 2; x += (r.width() - w) / 2; y += (r.height() - h) /2; switch( pe ) { case PE_ArrowDown: pa.setPoint( 0, x, y ); pa.setPoint( 1, x + w, y ); pa.setPoint( 2, x + w / 2, y + h ); break; case PE_ArrowUp: pa.setPoint( 0, x, y + h ); pa.setPoint( 1, x + w, y + h ); pa.setPoint( 2, x + w / 2, y ); break; case PE_ArrowLeft: pa.setPoint( 0, x + w, y ); pa.setPoint( 1, x + w, y + h ); pa.setPoint( 2, x, y + h / 2 ); break; case PE_ArrowRight: pa.setPoint( 0, x, y ); pa.setPoint( 1, x, y + h ); pa.setPoint( 2, x + w, y + h / 2 ); break; default: break; } // use different colors to indicate that the arrow is // enabled/disabled if ( flags & Style_Enabled ) { p->setPen( cg.mid() ); p->setBrush( cg.brush( TQColorGroup::ButtonText ) ); } else { p->setPen( cg.buttonText() ); p->setBrush( cg.brush( TQColorGroup::Mid ) ); } p->drawPolygon( pa ); } else { // let the base style handle the other primitives QWindowsStyle::drawPrimitive( pe, p, r, cg, flags, data ); } } \endcode \section2 Using a custom style There are several ways of using a custom style in a TQt application. The simplest way is to include the following lines of code in the application's main() function: \code #include "customstyle.h" int main( int argc, char ** argv ) { QApplication::setStyle( new CustomStyle() ); // do the usual routine on creating your QApplication object etc. } \endcode Note that you must also include the \c customstyle.h and \c customstyle.cpp files in your project. 2. Creating and using a pluggable style You may want to make your style available for use in other applications, some of which may not be yours and are not available for you to recompile. The TQt Plugin system makes it possible to create styles as plugins. Styles created as plugins are loaded as shared objects at runtime by TQt itself. Please refer to the \link plugins-howto.html TQt Plugin\endlink documentation for more information on how to go about creating a style plugin. Compile your plugin and put it into $TQTDIR/plugins/styles. We now have a pluggable style that TQt can load automatically. To use your new style with existing applications, simply start the application with the following argument: \code ./application -style custom \endcode The application will use the look and feel from the custom style you implemented. */