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/*!
\example widgets/wiggly
\title Wiggly Example
\ingroup examples-widgets
\brief The Wiggly example shows how to animate a widget using
QBasicTimer and \l{QObject::timerEvent()}{timerEvent()}. In
addition, the example demonstrates how to use QFontMetrics to
determine the size of text on screen.
\borderedimage wiggly-example.png
\caption Screenshot of the Wiggly example
QBasicTimer is a low-level class for timers. Unlike QTimer,
QBasicTimer doesn't inherit from QObject; instead of emitting a
\l{QTimer::timeout()}{timeout()} signal when a certain amount of
time has passed, it sends a QTimerEvent to a QObject of our
choice. This makes QBasicTimer a more lightweight alternative to
QTimer. Qt's built-in widgets use it internally, and it is
provided in Qt's API for highly-optimized applications (such as
embedded applications).
The example consists of two classes:
\list
\li \c WigglyWidget is the custom widget displaying the text
in a wiggly line.
\li \c Dialog is the dialog widget allowing the user to enter a
text. It combines a \c WigglyWidget and a \c QLineEdit.
\endlist
We will first take a quick look at the \c Dialog class, then we
will review the \c WigglyWidget class.
\section1 Dialog Class Definition
\snippet widgets/wiggly/dialog.h 0
The \c Dialog class provides a dialog widget that allows the user
to enter a text. The text is then rendered by \c WigglyWidget.
\section1 Dialog Class Implementation
\snippet widgets/wiggly/dialog.cpp 0
In the constructor we create a wiggly widget along with a
\l{QLineEdit}{line edit}, and we put the two widgets in a
vertical layout. We connect the line edit's \l
{QLineEdit::textChanged()}{textChanged()} signal to the wiggly
widget's \c setText() slot to obtain the real time interaction
with the wiggly widget. The widget's default text is "Hello
world!".
\section1 WigglyWidget Class Definition
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.h 0
The \c WigglyWidget class provides the wiggly line displaying the
text. We subclass QWidget and reimplement the standard \l
{QWidget::paintEvent()}{paintEvent()} and \l
{QObject::timerEvent()}{timerEvent()} functions to draw and update
the widget. In addition we implement a public \c setText() slot
that sets the widget's text.
The \c timer variable, of type QBasicTimer, is used to update the
widget at regular intervals, making the widget move. The \c text
variable is used to store the currently displayed text, and \c
step to calculate position and color for each character on the
wiggly line.
\section1 WigglyWidget Class Implementation
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 0
In the constructor, we make the widget's background slightly
lighter than the usual background using the QPalette::Midlight
color role. The background role defines the brush from the
widget's palette that Qt uses to paint the background. Then we
enlarge the widget's font with 20 points.
Finally we start the timer; the call to QBasicTimer::start()
makes sure that \e this particular wiggly widget will receive the
timer events generated when the timer times out (every 60
milliseconds).
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 1
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 2
The \c paintEvent() function is called whenever a QPaintEvent is
sent to the widget. Paint events are sent to widgets that need to
update themselves, for instance when part of a widget is exposed
because a covering widget was moved. For the wiggly widget, a
paint event will also be generated every 60 milliseconds from
the \c timerEvent() slot.
The \c sineTable represents y-values of the sine curve,
multiplied by 100. It is used to make the wiggly widget move
along the sine curve.
The QFontMetrics object provides information about the widget's
font. The \c x variable is the horizontal position where we start
drawing the text. The \c y variable is the vertical position of
the text's base line. Both variables are computed so that the
text is horizontally and vertically centered. To compute the base
line, we take into account the font's ascent (the height of the
font above the base line) and font's descent (the height of the
font below the base line). If the descent equals the ascent, they
cancel out each other and the base line is at \c height() / 2.
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 3
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 4
Each time the \c paintEvent() function is called, we create a
QPainter object \c painter to draw the contents of the widget.
For each character in \c text, we determine the color and the
position on the wiggly line based on \c step. In addition, \c x
is incremented by the character's width.
For simplicity, we assume that QFontMetrics::horizontalAdvance(\c text)
returns the sum of the individual character advances
(QFontMetrics::horizontalAdvance(\c text[i])). In practice, this is not
always the case because QFontMetrics::horizontalAdvance(\c text) also takes
into account the kerning between certain letters (e.g., 'A' and
'V'). The result is that the text isn't perfectly centered. You
can verify this by typing "AVAVAVAVAVAV" in the line edit.
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 5
\snippet widgets/wiggly/wigglywidget.cpp 6
The \c timerEvent() function receives all the timer events that
are generated for this widget. If a timer event is sent from the
widget's QBasicTimer, we increment \c step to make the text move,
and call QWidget::update() to refresh the display. Any other
timer event is passed on to the base class's implementation of
the \l{QWidget::timerEvent()}{timerEvent()} function.
The QWidget::update() slot does not cause an immediate repaint;
instead the slot schedules a paint event for processing when Qt
returns to the main event loop. The paint events are then handled
by \c{WigglyWidget}'s \c paintEvent() function.
*/