/****************************************************************************

**

** Copyright (C) 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).

** All rights reserved.

** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com)

**

** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit.

**

** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$

** No Commercial Usage

** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed.

** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions

** contained in the Technology Preview License Agreement accompanying

** this package.

**

** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage

** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser

** General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software

** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the

** packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to

** ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements

** will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html.

**

** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain additional

** rights.  These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL Exception

** version 1.1, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this package.

**

** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact

** Nokia at qt-info@nokia.com.

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

** $QT_END_LICENSE$

**

****************************************************************************/

/*!

    \group graphicsview-api

    \title Graphics View Classes

*/

/*!

    \page graphicsview.html

    \title The Graphics View Framework

    \brief An overview of the Graphics View framework for interactive 2D

    graphics.

    \ingroup frameworks-technologies

    \keyword Graphics View

    \keyword GraphicsView

    \keyword Graphics

    \keyword Canvas

    \since 4.2

    Graphics View provides a surface for managing and interacting with a large

    number of custom-made 2D graphical items, and a view widget for

    visualizing the items, with support for zooming and rotation.

    The framework includes an event propagation architecture that allows

    precise double-precision interaction capabilities for the items on the

    scene. Items can handle key events, mouse press, move, release and

    double click events, and they can also track mouse movement.

    Graphics View uses a BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) tree to provide very

    fast item discovery, and as a result of this, it can visualize large

    scenes in real-time, even with millions of items.

    Graphics View was introduced in Qt 4.2, replacing its predecessor,

    QCanvas. If you are porting from QCanvas, see \l{Porting to Graphics

    View}.

    Topics:

    \tableofcontents

    \section1 The Graphics View Architecture

      Graphics View provides an item-based approach to model-view programming,

      much like InterView's convenience classes QTableView, QTreeView and

      QListView. Several views can observe a single scene, and the scene

      contains items of varying geometric shapes.

      \section2 The Scene

        QGraphicsScene provides the Graphics View scene. The scene has the

        following responsibilities:

        \list

        \o Providing a fast interface for managing a large number of items

        \o Propagating events to each item

        \o Managing item state, such as selection and focus handling

        \o Providing untransformed rendering functionality; mainly for printing

        \endlist

        The scene serves as a container for QGraphicsItem objects. Items are

        added to the scene by calling QGraphicsScene::addItem(), and then

        retrieved by calling one of the many item discovery functions.

        QGraphicsScene::items() and its overloads return all items contained

        by or intersecting with a point, a rectangle, a polygon or a general

        vector path. QGraphicsScene::itemAt() returns the topmost item at a

        particular point. All item discovery functions return the items in

        descending stacking order (i.e., the first returned item is topmost,

        and the last item is bottom-most).

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 0

        QGraphicsScene's event propagation architecture schedules scene events

        for delivery to items, and also manages propagation between items. If

        the scene receives a mouse press event at a certain position, the

        scene passes the event on to whichever item is at that position.

        QGraphicsScene also manages certain item states, such as item

        selection and focus. You can select items on the scene by calling

        QGraphicsScene::setSelectionArea(), passing an arbitrary shape. This

        functionality is also used as a basis for rubberband selection in

        QGraphicsView. To get the list of all currently selected items, call

        QGraphicsScene::selectedItems(). Another state handled by

        QGraphicsScene is whether or not an item has keyboard input focus. You

        can set focus on an item by calling QGraphicsScene::setFocusItem() or

        QGraphicsItem::setFocus(), or get the current focus item by calling

        QGraphicsScene::focusItem().

        Finally, QGraphicsScene allows you to render parts of the scene into a

        paint device through the QGraphicsScene::render() function. You can

        read more about this in the Printing section later in this document.

      \section2 The View

        QGraphicsView provides the view widget, which visualizes the contents

        of a scene. You can attach several views to the same scene, to provide

        several viewports into the same data set. The view widget is a scroll

        area, and provides scroll bars for navigating through large scenes. To

        enable OpenGL support, you can set a QGLWidget as the viewport by

        calling QGraphicsView::setViewport().

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 1

        The view receives input events from the keyboard and mouse, and

        translates these to scene events (converting the coordinates used

        to scene coordinates where appropriate), before sending the events

        to the visualized scene.

        Using its transformation matrix, QGraphicsView::transform(), the view can

        \e transform the scene's coordinate system. This allows advanced

        navigation features such as zooming and rotation. For convenience,

        QGraphicsView also provides functions for translating between view and

        scene coordinates: QGraphicsView::mapToScene() and

        QGraphicsView::mapFromScene().

        \img graphicsview-view.png

      \section2 The Item

        QGraphicsItem is the base class for graphical items in a

        scene. Graphics View provides several standard items for typical

        shapes, such as rectangles (QGraphicsRectItem), ellipses

        (QGraphicsEllipseItem) and text items (QGraphicsTextItem), but the

        most powerful QGraphicsItem features are available when you write a

        custom item. Among other things, QGraphicsItem supports the following

        features:

        \list

        \o Mouse press, move, release and double click events, as well as mouse

        hover events, wheel events, and context menu events.

        \o Keyboard input focus, and key events

        \o Drag and drop

        \o Grouping, both through parent-child relationships, and with

        QGraphicsItemGroup

        \o Collision detection

        \endlist

        Items live in a local coordinate system, and like QGraphicsView, it

        also provides many functions for mapping coordinates between the item

        and the scene, and from item to item. Also, like QGraphicsView, it can

        transform its coordinate system using a matrix:

        QGraphicsItem::transform(). This is useful for rotating and scaling

        individual items.

        Items can contain other items (children). Parent items'

        transformations are inherited by all its children. Regardless of an

        item's accumulated transformation, though, all its functions (e.g.,

        QGraphicsItem::contains(), QGraphicsItem::boundingRect(),

        QGraphicsItem::collidesWith()) still operate in local coordinates.

        QGraphicsItem supports collision detection through the

        QGraphicsItem::shape() function, and QGraphicsItem::collidesWith(),

        which are both virtual functions. By returning your item's shape as a

        local coordinate QPainterPath from QGraphicsItem::shape(),

        QGraphicsItem will handle all collision detection for you. If you want

        to provide your own collision detection, however, you can reimplement

        QGraphicsItem::collidesWith().

        \img graphicsview-items.png

    \section1 Classes in the Graphics View Framework

      These classes provide a framework for creating interactive applications.

      \annotatedlist graphicsview-api

    \section1 The Graphics View Coordinate System

      Graphics View is based on the Cartesian coordinate system; items'

      position and geometry on the scene are represented by sets of two

      numbers: the x-coordinate, and the y-coordinate. When observing a scene

      using an untransformed view, one unit on the scene is represented by

      one pixel on the screen.

      \note The inverted Y-axis coordinate system (where \c y grows upwards)

      is unsupported as Graphics Views uses Qt's coordinate system. 

      There are three effective coordinate systems in play in Graphics View:

      Item coordinates, scene coordinates, and view coordinates. To simplify

      your implementation, Graphics View provides convenience functions that

      allow you to map between the three coordinate systems.

      When rendering, Graphics View's scene coordinates correspond to

      QPainter's \e logical coordinates, and view coordinates are the same as

      \e device coordinates.  In \l{The Coordinate System}, you can read about

      the relationship between logical coordinates and device coordinates.

      \img graphicsview-parentchild.png

      \section2 Item Coordinates

          Items live in their own local coordinate system. Their coordinates

          are usually centered around its center point (0, 0), and this is

          also the center for all transformations. Geometric primitives in the

          item coordinate system are often referred to as item points, item

          lines, or item rectangles.

          When creating a custom item, item coordinates are all you need to

          worry about; QGraphicsScene and QGraphicsView will perform all

          transformations for you. This makes it very easy to implement custom

          items. For example, if you receive a mouse press or a drag enter

          event, the event position is given in item coordinates. The

          QGraphicsItem::contains() virtual function, which returns true if a

          certain point is inside your item, and false otherwise, takes a

          point argument in item coordinates. Similarly, an item's bounding

          rect and shape are in item coordinates.

          At item's \e position is the coordinate of the item's center point

          in its parent's coordinate system; sometimes referred to as \e

          parent coordinates. The scene is in this sense regarded as all

          parent-less items' "parent". Top level items' position are in scene

          coordinates.

          Child coordinates are relative to the parent's coordinates. If the

          child is untransformed, the difference between a child coordinate

          and a parent coordinate is the same as the distance between the

          items in parent coordinates. For example: If an untransformed child

          item is positioned precisely in its parent's center point, then the

          two items' coordinate systems will be identical. If the child's

          position is (10, 0), however, the child's (0, 10) point will

          correspond to its parent's (10, 10) point.

          Because items' position and transformation are relative to the

          parent, child items' coordinates are unaffected by the parent's

          transformation, although the parent's transformation implicitly

          transforms the child. In the above example, even if the parent is

          rotated and scaled, the child's (0, 10) point will still correspond

          to the parent's (10, 10) point. Relative to the scene, however, the

          child will follow the parent's transformation and position. If the

          parent is scaled (2x, 2x), the child's position will be at scene

          coordinate (20, 0), and its (10, 0) point will correspond to the

          point (40, 0) on the scene.

          With QGraphicsItem::pos() being one of the few exceptions,

          QGraphicsItem's functions operate in item coordinates, regardless of

          the item, or any of its parents' transformation. For example, an

          item's bounding rect (i.e. QGraphicsItem::boundingRect()) is always

          given in item coordinates.

      \section2 Scene Coordinates

          The scene represents the base coordinate system for all its items.

          The scene coordinate system describes the position of each top-level

          item, and also forms the basis for all scene events delivered to the

          scene from the view.  Each item on the scene has a scene position

          and bounding rectangle (QGraphicsItem::scenePos(),

          QGraphicsItem::sceneBoundingRect()), in addition to its local item

          pos and bounding rectangle. The scene position describes the item's

          position in scene coordinates, and its scene bounding rect forms the

          basis for how QGraphicsScene determines what areas of the scene have

          changed. Changes in the scene are communicated through the

          QGraphicsScene::changed() signal, and the argument is a list of

          scene rectangles.

      \section2 View Coordinates

          View coordinates are the coordinates of the widget. Each unit in

          view coordinates corresponds to one pixel. What's special about this

          coordinate system is that it is relative to the widget, or viewport,

          and unaffected by the observed scene. The top left corner of

          QGraphicsView's viewport is always (0, 0), and the bottom right

          corner is always (viewport width, viewport height). All mouse events

          and drag and drop events are originally received as view

          coordinates, and you need to map these coordinates to the scene in

          order to interact with items.

      \section2 Coordinate Mapping

          Often when dealing with items in a scene, it can be useful to map

          coordinates and arbitrary shapes from the scene to an item, from

          item to item, or from the view to the scene. For example, when you

          click your mouse in QGraphicsView's viewport, you can ask the scene

          what item is under the cursor by calling

          QGraphicsView::mapToScene(), followed by

          QGraphicsScene::itemAt(). If you want to know where in the viewport

          an item is located, you can call QGraphicsItem::mapToScene() on the

          item, then QGraphicsView::mapFromScene() on the view. Finally, if

          you use want to find what items are inside a view ellipse, you can

          pass a QPainterPath to mapToScene(), and then pass the mapped path

          to QGraphicsScene::items().

          You can map coordinates and shapes to and from and item's scene by

          calling QGraphicsItem::mapToScene() and

          QGraphicsItem::mapFromScene(). You can also map to an item's parent

          item by calling QGraphicsItem::mapToParent() and

          QGraphicsItem::mapFromParent(), or between items by calling

          QGraphicsItem::mapToItem() and QGraphicsItem::mapFromItem(). All

          mapping functions can map both points, rectangles, polygons and

          paths.

          The same mapping functions are available in the view, for mapping to

          and from the scene. QGraphicsView::mapFromScene() and

          QGraphicsView::mapToScene(). To map from a view to an item, you

          first map to the scene, and then map from the scene to the item.

    \section1 Key Features

      \section2 Zooming and rotating

        QGraphicsView supports the same affine transformations as QPainter

        does through QGraphicsView::setMatrix(). By applying a transformation

        to the view, you can easily add support for common navigation features

        such as zooming and rotating.

        Here is an example of how to implement zoom and rotate slots in a

        subclass of QGraphicsView:

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 2

        The slots could be connected to \l{QToolButton}{QToolButtons} with

        \l{QAbstractButton::autoRepeat}{autoRepeat} enabled.

        QGraphicsView keeps the center of the view aligned when you transform

        the view.

        See also the \l{Elastic Nodes Example}{Elastic Nodes} example for

        code that shows how to implement basic zooming features.

      \section2 Printing

        Graphics View provides single-line printing through its rendering

        functions, QGraphicsScene::render() and QGraphicsView::render().  The

        functions provide the same API: You can have the scene or the view

        render all or parts of their contents into any paint device by passing

        a QPainter to either of the rendering functions. This example shows

        how to print the whole scene into a full page, using QPrinter.

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 3

        The difference between the scene and view rendering functions is that

        one operates in scene coordinates, and the other in view coordinates.

        QGraphicsScene::render() is often preferred for printing whole

        segments of a scene untransformed, such as for plotting geometrical

        data, or for printing a text document. QGraphicsView::render(), on the

        other hand, is suitable for taking screenshots; its default behavior

        is to render the exact contents of the viewport using the provided

        painter.

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 4

        When the source and target areas' sizes do not match, the source

        contents are stretched to fit into the target area. By passing a

        Qt::AspectRatioMode to the rendering function you are using, you can

        choose to maintain or ignore the aspect ratio of the scene when the

        contents are stretched.

      \section2 Drag and Drop

        Because QGraphicsView inherits QWidget indirectly, it already provides

        the same drag and drop functionality that QWidget provides. In

        addition, as a convenience, the Graphics View framework provides drag

        and drop support for the scene, and for each and every item. As the

        view receives a drag, it translates the drag and drop events into a

        QGraphicsSceneDragDropEvent, which is then forwarded to the scene. The

        scene takes over scheduling of this event, and sends it to the first

        item under the mouse cursor that accepts drops.

        To start a drag from an item, create a QDrag object, passing a pointer

        to the widget that starts the drag. Items can be observed by many

        views at the same time, but only one view can start the drag. Drags

        are in most cases started as a result of pressing or moving the mouse,

        so in mousePressEvent() or mouseMoveEvent(), you can get the

        originating widget pointer from the event. For example:

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 5

        To intercept drag and drop events for the scene, you reimplement

        QGraphicsScene::dragEnterEvent() and whichever event handlers your

        particular scene needs, in a QGraphicsItem subclass. You can read more

        about drag and drop in Graphics View in the documentation for each of

        QGraphicsScene's event handlers.

        Items can enable drag and drop support by calling

        QGraphicsItem::setAcceptDrops(). To handle the incoming drag,

        reimplement QGraphicsItem::dragEnterEvent(),

        QGraphicsItem::dragMoveEvent(), QGraphicsItem::dragLeaveEvent(), and

        QGraphicsItem::dropEvent().

        See also the \l{Drag and Drop Robot Example}{Drag and Drop Robot} example

        for a demonstration of Graphics View's support for drag and drop

        operations.

      \section2 Cursors and Tooltips

        Like QWidget, QGraphicsItem also supports cursors

        (QGraphicsItem::setCursor()), and tooltips

        (QGraphicsItem::setToolTip()). The cursors and tooltips are activated

        by QGraphicsView as the mouse cursor enters the item's area (detected

        by calling QGraphicsItem::contains()).

        You can also set a default cursor directly on the view by calling

        QGraphicsView::setCursor().

        See also the \l{Drag and Drop Robot Example}{Drag and Drop Robot}

        example for code that implements tooltips and cursor shape handling.

      \section2 Animation

        Graphics View supports animation at several levels. You can easily

        assemble animation by using the Animation Framework. For that you'll

		need your items to inherit from QGraphicsObject and associate 

		QPropertyAnimation with them. QPropertyAnimation allows to animate any 

		QObject property.

        Another option is to create a custom item that inherits from QObject

        and QGraphicsItem. The item can the set up its own timers, and control

        animations with incremental steps in QObject::timerEvent().

        A third option, which is mostly available for compatibility with

        QCanvas in Qt 3, is to \e advance the scene by calling

        QGraphicsScene::advance(), which in turn calls

        QGraphicsItem::advance().

      \section2 OpenGL Rendering

        To enable OpenGL rendering, you simply set a new QGLWidget as the

        viewport of QGraphicsView by calling QGraphicsView::setViewport(). If

        you want OpenGL with antialiasing, you need OpenGL sample buffer

        support (see QGLFormat::sampleBuffers()).

        Example:

        \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_graphicsview.qdoc 6

      \section2 Item Groups

        By making an item a child of another, you can achieve the most

        essential feature of item grouping: the items will move together, and

        all transformations are propagated from parent to child.

        In addition, QGraphicsItemGroup is a special item that combines child

        event handling with a useful interface for adding and removing items

        to and from a group. Adding an item to a QGraphicsItemGroup will keep

        the item's original position and transformation, whereas reparenting

        items in general will cause the child to reposition itself relative to

        its new parent. For convenience, you can create

        \l{QGraphicsItemGroup}s through the scene by calling

        QGraphicsScene::createItemGroup().

      \section2 Widgets and Layouts

        Qt 4.4 introduced support for geometry and layout-aware items through

        QGraphicsWidget. This special base item is similar to QWidget, but

        unlike QWidget, it doesn't inherit from QPaintDevice; rather from

        QGraphicsItem instead. This allows you to write complete widgets with

        events, signals & slots, size hints and policies, and you can also

        manage your widgets geometries in layouts through

        QGraphicsLinearLayout and QGraphicsGridLayout.

        \section3 QGraphicsWidget

          Building on top of QGraphicsItem's capabilities and lean footprint,

          QGraphicsWidget provides the best of both worlds: extra

          functionality from QWidget, such as the style, font, palette, layout

          direction, and its geometry, and resolution independence and

          transformation support from QGraphicsItem.  Because Graphics View

          uses real coordinates instead of integers, QGraphicsWidget's

          geometry functions also operate on QRectF and QPointF. This also

          applies to frame rects, margins and spacing. With QGraphicsWidget

          it's not uncommon to specify contents margins of (0.5, 0.5, 0.5,

          0.5), for example. You can create both subwidgets and "top-level"

          windows; in some cases you can now use Graphics View for advanced

          MDI applications.

          Some of QWidget's properties are supported, including window flags

          and attributes, but not all. You should refer to QGraphicsWidget's

          class documentation for a complete overview of what is and what is

          not supported. For example, you can create decorated windows by

          passing the Qt::Window window flag to QGraphicsWidget's constructor,

          but Graphics View currently doesn't support the Qt::Sheet and

          Qt::Drawer flags that are common on Mac OS X.

          The capabilities of QGraphicsWidget are expected to grow depending

          on community feedback.

        \section3 QGraphicsLayout

          QGraphicsLayout is part of a second-generation layout framework

          designed specifically for QGraphicsWidget. Its API is very similar

          to that of QLayout. You can manage widgets and sublayouts inside

          either QGraphicsLinearLayout and QGraphicsGridLayout. You can also

          easily write your own layout by subclassing QGraphicsLayout

          yourself, or add your own QGraphicsItem items to the layout by

          writing an adaptor subclass of QGraphicsLayoutItem.

      \section2 Embedded Widget Support

          Graphics View provides seamless support for embedding any widget