Property editor fully featured?

[brcain]

Hello,

I know (and appreciate) that Qt Designer is "open source". But, it doesn't seem to be as fully featured as comercial tools I've used. Perhaps I'm still just on the learning curve.

It seems that the property editor doesn't provide access to **ALL** the widgets' attributes. For example, I haven't found out how to get to the QGridLayout attributes: row, column, row span, and column span. I know you can do this (somewhat) graphically, but, sometimes it is easier (and necessary) to edit with the property editor.

I've also noticed that occasionally the tool will crash ... causing the UI file I'm working on to be empty. I've noticed this especially happens more when changing the central widget type (e.g. to QWorkSpace ... editing the UI file by hand and reloading into Designer). So, I have to be very careful that I keep backups.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

Thanks,
Ben

[high_flyer]

It seems that the property editor doesn't provide access to **ALL** the widgets' attributes

This has nothing to do with the capabilties of Designer, each widget plugin exposes the properties it wants.
When you program your own designer plugin you can expose any and all properties of your custom widget.
So what ever properties that are not exposed, its because the trolls thought there is no need to expose them.
If you feel you need extra properties exposed to designer, you can always create a new designer plugin based on the widget you are interested in, and expose any properties you like.

[brcain]

So what ever properties that are not exposed, its because the trolls thought there is no need to expose them.
If you feel you need extra properties exposed to designer, you can always create a new designer plugin based on the widget you are interested in, and expose any properties you like.

I respectfully disagree ... that a user should have to re-invent the plugins to get to all the attributes. My point is that the tool IMHO seems not so fully featured ... again compared to commercial tools I've used in the past.

I'm not opposed to learning the correct way of doing things. But, my impression is that it still needs features added.

[high_flyer]

I respectfully disagree

With what?
With the fact that a widget designer plugin can decide which properties it exposes to designer and which not?
That is a fact, nothing you can agree or dissagree about.
If you mean you disagree with the concept, and you think that designer should ALWAYS expose ALL properties of ALL widgets, then that is ok, you should bring it up to the rolls.
I personlly though, do think that the current conept is a good one.
It allows the plugins to decide what to expose, just like a class has private and protected sections.
The control should be in the hands of the creator, not the user <- only my oppinion.

[brcain]

The control should be in the hands of the creator, not the user <- only my oppinion.

My point is I have noticed something very useful in the past that is not present with Designer ... as far as I can tell. It's obvious that they make the decisions they make. I wasn't trying to be a dolt

[high_flyer]

Yes but you are missing the point - its not lacking on part of designer - Designer can expose ANY property that a widget will allow it to expose, thus designer is not limited relative to other tools you are speaking of, but has a greater functionality (allowing the widgets control on exposed properties, something other tools, I guess do not do)

[brcain]

has a greater functionality (allowing the widgets control on exposed properties, something other tools, I guess do not do)

Yep. It's also open source. Don't get me wrong I do appreciate it. I'll take your advice and ask for new features.

[wysota]

Yep. It's also open source. Don't get me wrong I do appreciate it. I'll take your advice and ask for new features.

These things you want are not new features, they are tries to do something the hard way. They are all available by dragging widgets to the layout. Designer operates on widgets, not layouts. It exposes properties of widgets, not layouts. The "attributes" you want (meaning row, column, row span, column span of the layout) are (1) not properties, (2) computed by Designer automatically when you place widgets on the form and make laid out groups out of them, you needn't access them directly. If you want to do that yourself, open your favourite xml editor and modify the spans there - the .ui file uses xml notation.

Designer (and Qt at all) operates on abstractions. The concept of layouts is an abstraction too - thanks to them you don't have to worry how your widget will behave when resized, as it will be controlled using some abstract mechanism which you don't have to care about. The row and column number (not speaking of row or column span) is of no interest to you - just place your widgets as you want them and apply a layout. It will adjust to what you have designed.

[brcain]

Designer operates on abstractions. The concept of layouts is an abstraction too - thanks to them you don't have to worry how your widget will behave when resized.

I realize it's an abstraction ... an abstraction that is intended to be natural to the designer. My understanding is that Qt is trying to treat all things equal (thus no layout managers ... a design decision) ... yet have Qt Designer provide a natural view to the designer.

It's the abstraction I'm trying to work from. The notion of where a widget lives (logically ... i.e. a quadrant) in a QGridLayout is important and necessary to specify by the designer. Albeit, I freely admit I'm confused about how to specify it (and particular so change it) graphically in some cases.

[ZB]

I agree it could need some more features, especially being able to change the hierarchy in the object inspector via drag'n'drop, emptying containers and "flattening" them. Some more widgets to chose from would be great too since it does take quite some effort to get acquainted enough with it to be able to add custom widgets or even the ones native to Qt which are not available in the designer.

[wysota]

My understanding is that Qt is trying to treat all things equal (thus no layout managers ... a design decision)

I don't quite understand... You can operate on layouts in Designer, can't you?

... yet have Qt Designer provide a natural view to the designer.

It does provide a way. Even two ways. One is placing widgets on the form first and then applying a layout. The other is to modify an existing layout by dragging objects which are part of it.

It's the abstraction I'm trying to work from. The notion of where a widget lives (logically ... i.e. a quadrant) in a QGridLayout is important and necessary to specify by the designer. Albeit, I freely admit I'm confused about how to specify it (and particular so change it) graphically in some cases.

Place widgets first, layouts later.

I agree it could need some more features, especially being able to change the hierarchy in the object inspector via drag'n'drop

This is something I'd like to see too, but I believe it is very hard to implement it. If you modify the hierarchy, the coordinates of widgets change, the layouts change, it would be hard to place those "pulled out" widgets in appropriate coordinates in their new parent to avoid a mess on the form.

emptying containers

Hmm.. have you tried selecting the contents of a container and pressing "Delete"? Or breaking container's layout and dragging widgets outside of the container?

and "flattening" them.

I don't know what you mean by "flattening" a container.

Some more widgets to chose from would be great

I'm sorry, who forbids you from adding more widgets to Designer?

too since it does take quite some effort to get acquainted enough with it to be able to add custom widgets

Are you serious with that? With Qt4 it is really easy - you open a context menu and choose "promote widget" and that's it, the easiest way to add custom widgets.

or even the ones native to Qt which are not available in the designer.

Which ones are you talking about? They are not there to choose from because of a reason. And if you insist, you can always make a plugin that makes it possible to place them directly on form. For Qt3 you can use wwWidgets to place some of them on the form, but believe me, you won't be able to do anything serious with them without subclassing anyway...