Subclassing QGraphicsProxyWidget vs. QGraphicsWidget vs. QGraphicsItem to create custom graphic objects

[Guigui]

Hi,

I am trying to implement a node editor GUI similar to the ones you can find in Blender, Houdini or Nuke, using the QGraphicsScene and QGraphicsView classes.

• A node is represented by a rectangle shape (QGraphicsPathItem/QGraphicsRectangleItem/QFrame or QDialog in a QGraphicsWidget or QGraphicsProxyWidget, etc..).
• The node has several connectors representing an input or an output.
• Outputs can be connected to inputs (QGraphicsPathItem/QGraphicsLineItem).

Something that could look similar to this (but a lot simpler for now):
!http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Blender3D_CreatingABumpMapCompositeNodes-2.49.png(Blender node graph screenshot)!

I am confused about the various ways to achieve this. Many of the Qt Graphicsview examples directly subclass the QDialog class and add them to the scene with scene->addWidget(myNode). In the "Basic Graphics Layouts Example":http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtwidgets/graphicsview-basicgraphicslayouts.html--, a QGraphicsWidget is used instead. Yet some other examples directly subclass the QGraphicsProxyWidget class to create the node, in which they create a QDialog or a QFrame which they set as the proxy widget with setWidget(nodeWidget).

I'm confused!
1- What do you think would be the best way to go? Any advantages/disadvantages?
2- What is the difference between subclassing the QGraphicsWidget class and subclassing the QGraphicsProxyWidget class?
3- Any other suggestions?