Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation
-
@SPlatten said in Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation:
As a WYSIWYG editor Qt Creator is rubbish because the presentation of what you see is not what you get.
I don't see how this should work - first you've styles which slightly modifies the items and then you can set the sizes and others by code - so what do you expect that this should work out?
That's why you have to use layouts - they arrange the widgets the way you want without killing the layout when another style is used or similar. -
This is now resolved, I redid the main window ui, the top line buttons and widgets are now in a horizontal layout with the main window content in a grid layout. As a WYSIWYG editor Qt Creator is rubbish because the presentation of what you see is not what you get.
@SPlatten said in Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation:
As a WYSIWYG editor Qt Creator is rubbish
I think the mistake you were doing was that you were designing your UI manually (positions and sizes of the widgets) for a specific theme. This is a very bad idea in my opinion because your UI is going to break as soon as the theme changes.
Lets assume QtDesigner would use the system theme, you are on Windows 10 and design your UI manually, everything is fine. One day Microsoft changes the theme (this will for sure happen one day) - your UI breaks, you have to adjust the UI and rebuild your app for the new Windows version. And there is one more thing to consider: if you're working on a cross platform app then your UI will only behave properly on the platform were you created it...I use QtDesigner a lot and don't see how it is rubbish as long as you use layouts. So, instead of blaming the tool use it properly.
-
Perhaps rubbish is too harsh, but I've used various GUI tools and IDE's and generally when designing a GUI in a front end, what you end up with in your application is exactly how you left it in the designer. This isn't always the case in Qt Creator.
I'm not sure what you mean by themes, I drag and drop widgets from the palette onto the form and edit properties if required, in code I didn't modify anything, however now its fixed.
Kind Regards,
Sy -
Perhaps rubbish is too harsh, but I've used various GUI tools and IDE's and generally when designing a GUI in a front end, what you end up with in your application is exactly how you left it in the designer. This isn't always the case in Qt Creator.
I'm not sure what you mean by themes, I drag and drop widgets from the palette onto the form and edit properties if required, in code I didn't modify anything, however now its fixed.
@SPlatten said in Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation:
I'm not sure what you mean by themes
This thread started with you saying that QtDesigner does not use system theme (which is correct observation).
-
@SPlatten said in Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation:
I'm not sure what you mean by themes
This thread started with you saying that QtDesigner does not use system theme (which is correct observation).
-
@SPlatten "Also notice the controls used in Qt Creator are not quite the same as those when running in the application, note that the rectangles for the buttons and combo are sharp when running in the application and very slightly rounded when running in Qt Creator." - you wrote this, right?
Also: "Qt Creator should present the forms in the way they will look when running on the host, which currently is very different"So, what I mean is: QtDesigner does not use the system theme (the one used in the OS it is running on).
-
@SPlatten "Also notice the controls used in Qt Creator are not quite the same as those when running in the application, note that the rectangles for the buttons and combo are sharp when running in the application and very slightly rounded when running in Qt Creator." - you wrote this, right?
Also: "Qt Creator should present the forms in the way they will look when running on the host, which currently is very different"So, what I mean is: QtDesigner does not use the system theme (the one used in the OS it is running on).
-
@SPlatten said in Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation:
ok, thank you, and why is that? Surely thats either a design fault?
No design fault - it's a design feature that your app uses the style of the OS so it looks native.
Qt Online Installer direct download: https://download.qt.io/official_releases/online_installers/
Visit the Qt Academy at https://academy.qt.io/catalog -
@jsulm , ok, thank you, and why is that? Surely thats either a design fault?
Is it a setting I can change?
-
@SPlatten said in Qt Creator WYSIWYG isn't giving a true representation:
ok, thank you, and why is that? Surely thats either a design fault?
No design fault - it's a design feature that your app uses the style of the OS so it looks native.
-
I agree that the Qt Designer is not very good. I had a harder time learning the designer instead of writing C++ code. Especially handling layouts is quite cumbersome in the designer. Most of the time I would be much faster writing things down in C++. But our project uses ui-files.
You can have a look how things would look like in the native style by using the menu: Tools -> Form Editor -> Preview. It is not entirely WYSIWYG, but you don't have to compile and run your application first to see how it looks. It will not know about your stylesheets, though (maybe there is a way to let it know about them). Also, showing a dialog in your application might actually resize the widget (especially when it contains layouts) whereas the preview shows you the same size as the designer.
The designer was done for designers who don't know how to code. If you know how to code, I personally prefer to write things down in C++. This gives me much better control over everything and even shifting around things inside the layout is much faster. Sometimes to add something to a complex grid layout you have to break the layout first, then reposition everything in the designer so that when you reapply the grid layout it will pick up on everything correctly. That is way faster in C++ code.
I don't expect any improvements for the Qt Designer. Designers (the people) are now targeted with QML instead (and also Qt Studio and the like with the commercial licenses).
-
@Christian-Ehrlicher , thats exactly what I want as the default behaviour, but thats not what I'm seeing. What I'm getting is a slightly different look in the designer to the end product.
@SPlatten I don't see what's wrong that there is another style used in designer - your layout should look good with all styles.
You can select the style for the preview in QtCreator -> extra -> layout editor -> preview in -> <your desired style> -
As previously noted, Qt GUI programs generally default to a style that matches the runtime environment to a reasonable degree. Designer on my Linux box defaults to the Fusion style. The program can force the style but a quick look at the Designer source does not immediately suggest it does.
Designer, like any idiomatic Qt GUI program, accepts the command line option "-style stylename". As far as I can tell the common option (depending on platform) are: Windows, WindowsXP, WindowsVista, Android, Fusion, Macintosh. On my Linux box I also have a Breeze and Oxygen style. If, on the platform you are running, it is possible to display in that style it will, or it will report to the console the allowable options and fall back to something that can work. I think Fusion is available and consistent for all platforms.
Within Designer you can preview your UI in any of the styles that can be rendered in your development environment. It's on one of the menus.
QtCreator also accepts the flag, but the main UI is so heavily customized the only difference seems to be in the menu look-and-feel.
Your program can force a style (QApplication::setStyle()) and accept that your program looks different to the other native apps. The Windows style emulation on Linux is Windows95-ish and truly awful ;)
You can develop your own style to plug in, but that's a lot of work.
