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QWorkspace Class Reference
[ workspace module ]

The QWorkspace widget provides a workspace window that can contain decorated windows, e.g. for MDI. More...

#include <qworkspace.h>

Inherits QWidget.

List of all member functions.

Public Members

QWorkspace ( QWidget * parent=0, const char * name=0 )
~QWorkspace ()
QWidget* activeWindow () const
QWidgetList windowList () const

Public Slots

void cascade ()
void tile ()

Signals

void windowActivated ( QWidget * w )

Detailed Description

The QWorkspace widget provides a workspace window that can contain decorated windows, e.g. for MDI.

An MDI application has one main window with a menu bar. The central widget of this window is a workspace. The workspace itself contains zero, one or more document windows, each of which displays a document.

The workspace itself is an ordinary Qt widget. It has a standard constructor that takes a parent widget and an object name. The parent window is usually a QMainWindow, but it need not be.

Document windows (alias MDI windows) are also ordinary Qt widgets, that have the workspace as parent widget. When you call show(), hide(), showMaximized(), setCaption(), etc on a document window, it is shown, hidden etc. with a frame, caption, icon and icon text, just as you'd expect. You can provide widget flags which will be used for the layout of the decoration or the behaviour of the widget itself.

A document window becomes active when it gets the keyboard focus. You can activate it using setFocus(), and the user can activate it by moving focus in the normal ways. The workspace emits a signal windowActivated() when it detects the activation change, and the function activeWindow() always returns a pointer to the active document window.

The convenience function windowList() returns a list of all document windows. This is useful to create a popup menu "&Windows" on the fly, for example.

QWorkspace provides two built-in layout strategies for child windows, cascade() and tile(). Both are slots, so you can easily connect menu entries to them.

In case the toplevel window contains a menu bar and a document window is maximized, QWorkspace moves the document window's minimize, restore and close buttons from the document window's frame to the workspace window's menu bar, and inserts a window operations menu on the extreme left of the menu bar.

Warning: User interface research indicates that most users have problems with MDI applications. Use this class cautiously.

Member Function Documentation

QWorkspace::QWorkspace ( QWidget * parent=0, const char * name=0 )

Constructs a workspace with a parent and a name

QWorkspace::~QWorkspace ()

Destroys the object and frees any allocated resources.

QWidget* QWorkspace::activeWindow () const

Returns the active window, or 0 if no window is active.