C++ GUI Programming with Qt4

by Blanchette, Jasmin; Summerfield, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780132354165
• ISBN10: 0132354160
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-04
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

Using Qt from Trolltech you can build industrial-strength C++ applications that run natively on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, and embedded Linux without source code changes. Now, two Trolltech insiders have written a start-to-finish guide to getting outstanding results with the latest version of Qt: Qt 4.3.

Author Biography

Jasmin Blanchette is a Trolltech senior software engineer and is writing his M.Sc. thesis in computer science at the University of Oslo.

Mark Summerfield works as an independent trainer and consultant specializing in C++, Qt, Python, and PyQt, and is the author of Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt. Blanchette and Summerfield coauthored C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3 and the first edition of C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Note	p. xi
Foreword	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
A Brief History of Qt	p. xix
Basic Qt
Getting Started	p. 3
Hello Qt	p. 3
Making Connections	p. 5
Laying Out Widgets	p. 6
Using the Reference Documentation	p. 10
Creating Dialogs	p. 13
Subclassing QDialog	p. 13
Signals and Slots in Depth	p. 20
Rapid Dialog Design	p. 23
Shape-Changing Dialogs	p. 31
Dynamic Dialogs	p. 38
Built-in Widget and Dialog Classes	p. 39
Creating Main Windows	p. 45
Subclassing QMainWindow	p. 46
Creating Menus and Toolbars	p. 50
Setting Up the Status Bar	p. 55
Implementing the File Menu	p. 57
Using Dialogs	p. 63
Storing Settings	p. 69
Multiple Documents	p. 71
Splash Screens	p. 74
Implementing Application Functionality	p. 77
The Central Widget	p. 77
Subclassing QTableWidget	p. 78
Loading and Saving	p. 84
Implementing the Edit Menu	p. 87
Implementing the Other Menus	p. 91
Subclassing QTableWidgetItem	p. 95
Creating Custom Widgets	p. 105
Customizing Qt Widgets	p. 105
Subclassing QWidget	p. 107
Integrating Custom Widgets with Qt Designer	p. 117
Double Buffering	p. 121
Intermediate Qt
Layout Management	p. 141
Laying Out Widgets on a Form	p. 141
Stacked Layouts	p. 147
Splitters	p. 149
Scrolling Areas	p. 152
Dock Windows and Toolbars	p. 154
Multiple Document Interface	p. 157
Event Processing	p. 167
Reimplementing Event Handlers	p. 167
Installing Event Filters	p. 172
Staying Responsive during Intensive Processing	p. 175
2D Graphics	p. 179
Painting with QPainter	p. 180
Coordinate System Transformations	p. 185
High-Quality Rendering with QImage	p. 193
Item-Based Rendering with Graphics View	p. 195
Printing	p. 217
Drag and Drop	p. 227
Enabling Drag and Drop	p. 227
Supporting Custom Drag Types	p. 232
Clipboard Handling	p. 237
Item View Classes	p. 239
Using the Item View Convenience Classes	p. 240
Using Predefined Models	p. 247
Implementing Custom Models	p. 252
Implementing Custom Delegates	p. 266
Container Classes	p. 273
Sequential Containers	p. 274
Associative Containers	p. 282
Generic Algorithms	p. 285
Strings, Byte Arrays, and Variants	p. 287
Input/Output	p. 295
Reading and Writing Binary Data	p. 296
Reading and Writing Text	p. 301
Traversing Directories	p. 307
Embedding Resources	p. 308
Inter-Process Communication	p. 309
Databases	p. 315
Connecting and Querying	p. 316
Viewing Tables	p. 322
Editing Records Using Forms	p. 324
Presenting Data in Tabular Forms	p. 330
Multithreading	p. 339
Creating Threads	p. 340
Synchronizing Threads	p. 343
Communicating with the Main Thread	p. 349
Using Qt's Classes in Secondary Threads	p. 356
Networking	p. 359
Writing FTP Clients	p. 359
Writing HTTP Clients	p. 368
Writing TCP Client-Server Applications	p. 371
Sending and Receiving UDP Datagrams	p. 381
XML	p. 387
Reading XML with QXmlStreamReader	p. 388
Reading XML with DOM	p. 395
Reading XML with SAX	p. 400
Writing XML	p. 404
Providing Online Help	p. 407
Tooltips, Status Tips, and "What's This?" Help	p. 407
Using a Web Browser to Provide Online Help	p. 409
Using QTextBrowser as a Simple Help Engine	p. 411
Using Qt Assistant for Powerful Online Help	p. 414
Advanced Qt
Internationalization	p. 419
Working with Unicode	p. 420
Making Applications Translation-Aware	p. 423
Dynamic Language Switching	p. 429
Translating Applications	p. 435
Look and Feel Customization	p. 439
Using Qt Style Sheets	p. 439
Subclassing QStyle	p. 454
3D Graphics	p. 471
Drawing Using OpenGL	p. 471
Combining OpenGL and QPainter	p. 477
Doing Overlays Using Framebuffer Objects	p. 484
Creating Plugins	p. 491
Extending Qt with Plugins	p. 492
Making Applications Plugin-Aware	p. 502
Writing Application Plugins	p. 505
Application Scripting	p. 509
Overview of the ECMAScript Language	p. 510
Extending Qt Applications with Scripts	p. 519
Implementing GUI Extensions Using Scripts	p. 523
Automating Tasks through Scripting	p. 530
Platform-Specific Features	p. 543
Interfacing with Native APIs	p. 543
Using ActiveX on Windows	p. 547
Handling X11 Session Management	p. 559
Embedded Programming	p. 567
Getting Started with Qt/Embedded Linux	p. 568
Customizing Qt/Embedded Linux	p. 570
Integrating Qt Applications with Qtopia	p. 571
Using Qtopia APIs	p. 576
Appendixes
Obtaining and Installing Qt	p. 589
Building Qt Applications	p. 593
Introduction to Qt Jambi	p. 605
Introduction to C++ for Java and C# Programmers	p. 623
Index	p. 665
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Qt is a comprehensive C++ application development framework for creating cross-platform GUI applications using a "write once, compile anywhere" approach. Qt lets programmers use a single source tree for applications that will run on Windows 98 to Vista, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and many other versions of Unix with X11. The Qt libraries and tools are also part of Qt/Embedded Linux, a product that provides its own window system on top of embedded Linux.The purpose of this book is to teach you how to write GUI programs using Qt 4. The book starts with "Hello Qt" and quickly progresses to more advanced topics, such as creating custom widgets and providing drag and drop. The text is complemented by a set of examples that you can download from the book's web site, http://www.informit.com/title/0132354160 . Appendix A explains how to download and install the software, including a free C++ compiler for those using Windows.The book is divided into three parts. Part I covers all the fundamental concepts and practices necessary for programming GUI applications using Qt. Knowledge of this part alone is sufficient to write useful GUI applications. Part II covers central Qt topics in greater depth, and Part III provides more specialized and advanced material. You can read the chapters of Parts II and III in any order, but they assume familiarity with the contents of Part I. The book also includes several appendixes, with Appendix B showing how to build Qt applications and Appendix C introducing Qt Jambi, the Java version of Qt.The first Qt 4 edition of the book built on the Qt 3 edition, although it was completely revised to reflect good idiomatic Qt 4 programming techniques and included new chapters on Qt 4's model/view architecture, the new plugin framework, embedded programming with Qt/Embedded Linux, and a new appendix. This extended and revised second edition has been thoroughly updated to take advantage of features introduced in Qt versions 4.2 and 4.3, and includes new chapters on look and feel customization and application scripting as well as two new appendixes. The original graphics chapter has been split into separate 2D and 3D chapters, which between them now cover the new graphics view classes and QPainter's OpenGL back-end. In addition, much new material has been added to the database, XML, and embedded programming chapters.This edition, like its predecessors, emphasizes explaining Qt programming and providing realistic examples, rather than simply rehashing or summarizing Qt's extensive online documentation. Because the book teaches solid Qt 4 programming principles and practices, readers will easily be able to learn the new Qt modules that come out in Qt 4.4, Qt 4.5, and later Qt 4.x versions. If you are using one of these later versions, be sure to read the "What's New in Qt 4.x" documents in the reference documentation to get an overview of the new features that are available.We have written the book with the assumption that you have a basic knowledge of C++, Java, or C#. The code examples use a subset of C++, avoiding many C++ features that are rarely needed when programming Qt. In the few places where a more advanced C++ construct is unavoidable, it is explained as it is used. If you already know Java or C# but have little or no experience with C++, we recommend that you begin by reading Appendix D, which provides sufficient introduction to C++ to be able to use this book. For a more thorough introduction to object-oriented programming in C++, we recommendC++ How to Programby P. J. Deitel and H. M. Deitel (Prentice Hall, 2007), andC++ Primerby Stanley B. Lippman, Jos¿Lajoie, and Barbara E. Moo (Addison-Wesley, 2005).Qt made its reputation as a cross-platform framework, but thanks to its intuitive and powerful API, many organizations use Qt for single-platfor