I tried to be specific and provide enough details. If I wrote to much I apologize. If post is in the wrong forum section please move it to appropriate one.
I need your help writing an application. I don’t what you to do job for me just read my ideas and help me find the best, easiest, way to do it. I have moderate experience with C++ and STL. I am new to Qt.
The job at hand is this. I work in the IT Section of the Printing department in a national Telecommunication company. We print bills for land and cellular phones, various notices for our company an outside clients. Most of outside client are bank and insurance companies. Problem we have is that every job that we do must have a work order. Work order is basically a paper with says that 1000 notices for car loans need to be printed for Bank A on Bank A paper type 2 on our printer 3 than put in Bank A envelopes type 1 on our machine for automating packaging 4 and to in every envelope flayer need to be put for the feeding station 2.
Our working orders are very old and don’t serve their purpose any more. I want to make application that will help automatize the process of making and later printing our new working orders.
My idea, and this is where I need your advice and criticism, is to make main window, I’ll see later if SDI or MDI approach is better, and in this main window have central widget that will be heart of my application. First idea was make series of combo boxes.
In first one you choose a client company. Bank A, Company B etc.
In second you choose the paper but it should give you only paper that previously selected company has. If you chose one client second combo box have only paper options for that client.
In third you choose the envelope. Again you should get options only for the selected company.
Latter combo boxes let you choose printer, packaging machines, or any extra work, cutting to format, folding that needs to be done. If combo boxes can’t be „connected“ in this fashion I thought to when you click choose client new dialog appears where you are given check boxes. You have text box under and every box you check fills the text box with different text. That text is returned when you click ok.
Then when you select and click ok you are return to main window and you have a a field where is the name of selected client. Then you click select paper and again new dialog appears and you are given options of paper that selected client use. Basically „connected“ combo boxes are replaced with dialogs if that is easier to „connect“. Combo boxes for printers, packaging and extra work can stay or become dialogs.
Every dialog, or combo box, should have option other for specific jobs client and I will have text box for each choice where user can write further explanations.
Next my idea is to make my class which will have members that correspond with every combo box, dialog, and text box, and methods that set or get those members. When user choose save all of his entries are put in my class and that method of my class save all members to file. When user load all data is loaded in my class and that data is used to initialize combo boxes, fields if dialogs are used, and text boxes.
When user choose new my empty class is created and again used to initialize the widget.
If it is better members of my class could be set as soon as user make a change in selection, chance paper or printer, or it can be done only on save.
I hope you got the idea of what I want to do. I would appreciate advice of what idea or mine is the best for this application or if you have ideas that are better. I can do all this work on my on but since I am new to Qt I probably won’t choose the optimal way to make this application which will cause more work for me and latter date of completion of my application since I will have to try several times.
Reading what I wrote it seems that idea with dialogs is better. Every check box fills text box with different text if you check "other" it fills it with nothing. After that you can type some more if you need and when you click ok text box content is returned and stored in main window text box that can't be changed from main window. Only through dialog. That text is stored in my class in strings.
Any suggestions will be very appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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