[PyKDE] PyQt: Better highlighting in QTabWidgets (improves eric3 and other Qt3.x apps)

[Torsten Marek]

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Thilo Ernst schrieb:
> Hello,
> 
> 
> in our own simulation-related PyQt app as well as in eric3 we found that
> the current tab in a QTabWidget is visually hard to recognize: apart
> form the decoration lines and a barely visible increase in the height of
> the
> tab's background it looks just like the  other tabs. As a consequence,
> the user is sometimes mistaken about which tab is active, types into the
> wrong page, etc.
> 
> We thus went digging for ways to have the current tab highlighted in some
> way - which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. The only  feasible way
> involved subclassing QTabBar and overriding its paintLabel() method.
> However this had to be combined with a rather nonintuitive way of detecting
> the current tab, otherwise strange rendering problems (some tabs not being
> painted at all) would occur when the app used more than one QTabWidget
> instance. Also, among the many conceivable ways to actually do the
> highlighting (foreground or background color, font weight etc.) , only
> using
> font().setUnderline() proved to be both working in the first place and
> to not
> result in unwanted side effects (such as font metrics problems).
> 
> The code snippet below is the result of our efforts: a working QTabWidget
> drop-in replacement class which renders the current tab underlined.
> 
> To have this widget work with Qt-Designer-generated code without the need
> to touch said generated code, we devised only a rather dirty solution:
> monkey-patching the qt module such that the 'QTabWidget' entry in the
> module
> dictionary refers to our new class (cf. last code line). If anybody
> knows a cleaner
> approach, please let the list know.
> 
> Feel free to use this code snippet in your own application. We would be
> delighted to see it ending up e.g. in a forthcoming version of eric3.
> (Hint: inserting it after line 15 of eric-3.8.0/eric/eric3.py suffices
> functionally,
> although this admittedly won't yield any style points :-)
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Thilo Ernst, Fraunhofer FIRST
> 
> 
> 
> --- snip ---
> 
> import qt
> 
> class HighlightedTabBar(qt.QTabBar):
>    """a tab bar where the label of the selected tab is painted
> underlined"""
>    def paintLabel(self, painter, rect, tab, has_focus):
>        # don't use QTabBar.currentTab() - here be dragons
>        selected= (self.tabAt(self.indexOf(self.currentTab()))==tab)
>        if selected:
>              painter.save()
>              # options for style emphasis: foreground/background colors
> don't work.
>              # Bold works but disturbs the font metrics. Underline Just
> Works.
>              painter.font().setUnderline(True)              
> qt.QTabBar.paintLabel(self, painter, rect, tab, has_focus)
>        if selected:
>              painter.restore()
> 
> QTabWidget_orig=qt.QTabWidget
> 
> class HighlightedTabWidget(QTabWidget_orig):
>    """A QTabWidget equivalent which uses our HighlightedTabBar"""
>    def __init__(self, parent, *args):
>        QTabWidget_orig.__init__(self, parent, *args)
>        self.setTabBar(HighlightedTabBar(self))
>       qt.QTabWidget=HighlightedTabWidget # monkey-patch the qt module to
> use this implementation
>      
> 
> 

Hi Thilo,

for PyQt3, you could just add

Python:from hltabwidget import HighlightedTabWidget as QTabWidget

to the form comment. This code will be inserted into the generated UI setup code
verbatim. Since pyuic3 just do "from qt import *", this will work and the code
will use your QTabWidget. For PyQt4, you can "promote" any Qt widget in Designer
to be a custom widget, and pyuic4 supports that already (if you ever should port
your application to Qt4). So if you that your QTabWidget is actually a
HighlightedTabWidget from the module your.package.hltabwidget, it'll use that
one for creating the widget.

greetings

Torsten

- --
Torsten Marek <shlomme at gmx.net>
ID: A244C858 -- FP: 1902 0002 5DFC 856B F146  894C 7CC5 451E A244 C858
Keyserver: subkeys.pgp.net

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