No pen cursor n Qt library

[oneeyeman1]

Hi,
The documentation at https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qt.html#CursorShape-enum does not display Pen Shaped cursor as a possible type.

I'm working with X11/Linux and want to see if there is a possibilty of getting a pen shaped cursor (for drawing program).

Thank you.

P.S.: This is surprising as it is a fairly often used cursor shape...

[SGaist]

Hi,

The most simple would be for you to provide that cursor in your application.

[oneeyeman1]

Hi,
Are you saying that all those painting apps provide pen shaped cursor?
And there is nothing like it inside X11/Wayland?

Thank you.

[Christian Ehrlicher]

@oneeyeman1 said in No pen cursor n Qt library:

Are you saying that all those painting apps provide pen shaped cursor?

Why should the operating system provide application specific cursors? They must be provided by the application.

[oneeyeman1]

Hi,
Im not asking for the OS - I'm asking for the library to provide a well known cursor for re'use on different apps.

Moreover, most developers are not UI designer and create some bitmap/png/upgrade is a nightmare...

Thank you.

[Christian Ehrlicher]

@oneeyeman1 said in No pen cursor n Qt library:

I'm asking for the library to provide a well known cursor for re'use on different apps.

What is 'well known cursor'? Who defines it?
Qt is providing an abstraction to access the os cursors, nothing more and tbh I don't see why it should provide a set of some cursors for specific applications.

[oneeyeman1]

Hi,
Then why do you provide all those cursor annum referenced at the link I gave in the OP?

Now if you open for example Paint on Windows, it will start with the cursor represented as a pen. This pen is defined somewhere in the public Windows C/C++/Java/.NET/whatever API as well as the icon somewhere on the system.
There is also an "I-beam: cursor with the same thing except that for some reason Qt provides enum definition for the "I-beam".

Is there a possibility to retrieve the pen cursor icon from X11/Wayland?

Thank you.

[Christian Ehrlicher]

Is there a possibility to retrieve the pen cursor icon from X11/Wayland?

What pen cursor are you referring here? X11 and wayland are window managers, they don't provide cursors.

Now if you open for example Paint on Windows, it will start with the cursor represented as a pen.

Here are the cursors provided directly by windows: https://learn.microsoft.com/de-de/windows/win32/menurc/about-cursors

As you can see there is no pen - Paint is a standalone program which ships it's own cursors.

[Pl45m4]

@Christian-Ehrlicher said in No pen cursor n Qt library:

As you can see there is no pen

Actually there is a pen icon (MAKEINTRESOURCE(32631)) defined in WinUser.h, but in the second table and it says that these icons don't have a specifier because they are not in use or not standard anymore.

[oneeyeman1]

Hi,
As you can see from the OP, I don't work in windows with Qt - I use Linux.
So any chance I find this icon/pixmap on Linux somewhere?

Thank you.

[Pl45m4]

@oneeyeman1 said in No pen cursor n Qt library:

So any chance I find this icon/pixmap on Linux somewhere?

If you don't check you will never know :)
Go where the icons are stored for your Linux distro...
As there was said before... if there isn't such standard icon, you have to create your own cursor set and ship it with your app... like most painting tools, games and other programs do

[wrosecrans]

@oneeyeman1 When I want a "familiar" but not universal icon for my application, I usually start by checking to see if there's an emoji that will work. You can render that from text using your favorite font with that character and set it as a custom cursor.

Here's a somewhat janky utility function I have that you might find useful as a starting point. I use Font Awesome as my default font for UI symbol stuff and bundle it with the app, but you can specify whatever font when doing this sort of thing. It includes stuff like paintbrush icons, and a zillion other things that you might want https://fontawesome.com/icons/paintbrush?f=classic&s=solid

If you are using standard emoji, you can even type them directly into your source code these days and do stuff like

auto myBrushIcon = to_Icon("🖌")

QIcon to_Icon(const std::string text, int size=64, std::string font="Font Awesome 5 Free", QColor background = QColor(255, 255, 255, 128));
 ///

QIcon to_Icon(const std::string text, int size, std::string font, QColor background)
{
    QPixmap pm(size, size);
    pm.fill(Qt::transparent);

    QPainter p(&pm);
    int margins = 0;
    p.fillRect(margins, margins, size-margins, size-margins, background);

    QFont icon_font;
    if (font != "") {
        icon_font.setFamily(font.c_str());
    }

    icon_font.setPixelSize(size*.75);
    icon_font.setWeight(0);
    p.setFont(icon_font);

    QFontMetrics metrics(icon_font, &pm);
    auto y = metrics.height();  // descent();
    auto x = metrics.width(QString::fromStdString(text));
    x = metrics.horizontalAdvance(QString::fromStdString(text));
    auto offset = (size-x) / 2; // size - y - 1
    p.drawText(offset, y, QString::fromStdString(text));

    p.end();
    return QIcon(pm);
}