[Qt-creator] Creator UI, MDI vs SDI, tabs, etc.

[Ziller Eike]

> On Sep 23, 2015, at 2:22 PM, René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday September 23 2015 11:29:54 Hunger Tobias wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> We do not support tab bars since we think they just do not scale to the number of documents you have open in an IDE. So such a bar is a waste of space.
> 
> It could be optional and its use left to the judgement of those who know what's a waste of space and what isn't - the users ;)

Well, the resources to maintain it would unfortunately not be optional.

> As a counter-example: KDevelop doesn't support standalone windows but has a tab bar. It often becomes too wide (tab width isn't adapted) but you can move tabs around so it's always possible to have the "tabs of chief interest" accessible without need for scrolling.
> 
>> Having said that: How can you navigate your open documents in Qt Creator?
> ...
>> There is navigation history (Alt-Left/Right) to go back to the places you had visited before (inside the same document and on to documents you had open earlier).
> 
> All of those require actions that I find unnecessary in most situations, and leading to a waste of time/energy when multiplied by the number of times I have to do perform them.
> 
>>> and/or 2) open document editors in separate windows (using the internal editor component of course)?
>> 
>> Window>Open in new Window should do that.
> 
> So it shouldn't be very hard to add something like control-clicking on a file in the project navigator, or even some form of tear-off for a document that's already open? Or (horror! :P) an option that makes using separate windows the default?

Control-(double)-clicking could probably be done, though it would need to be done in quite a few places, and I’m not sure if ctrl-click is already used somewhere. But certainly possible to overcome.
You can also add a shortcut to “open in new window”.
If you already have a window open (or other splits), you can drag documents to the split where you want to open them from almost anywhere, including the little document icon next to the document combo box at the top of an editor (I think the locator popup is the only exception atm).

Dragging out of the Qt Creator window to open a new editor window might be possible, I haven’t investigated how that would work in Qt. No idea if it would be possible to do without destroying features like dragging into a terminal window to paste the path there (then the discussions can begin which feature is the more widely used one ;) ).

> 
>> No idea what the mac uses as default fonts, sorry. But at least for some output panes you can nowadays adjust the font size with the + and - icons in their top bar.
> 
> Oh, I don't think the code calls for the presumed default font explicitly, family and size. I can't remember right now if there's a call to obtain the system font, or if that's what `QFont()` returns. It just seems useful to be able to configure the font used for those elements (and save it across restarts). I was going to suggest configuring just the size, but I think it'd be just as easy to make all aspects configurable.
> BTW, if memory serves me well there was a request not so long ago for *larger* font sizes on HD displays...

A way to configure fonts to be used for different parts of the UI would belong into the relatively new “Themes” feature of Qt Creator. That also requires the various parts to actually use such a setting. Many places atm orient themselves at the application font, but it seems that not all do it. Also, using a larger font would require changing many parts of Qt Creator to be changed to use a adaptive layouting. And possibly icon sizes. Yes, that would require many patches ;).
The request for larger font sizes afair mostly stemmed from (Qt on) Windows and Linux not having nice HiDPI support, which hopefully is much better with Qt 5.6.

Br, Eike

> Cheers,
> René
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Eike Ziller, Senior Software Engineer - The Qt Company GmbH
 
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