John Torjo wrote:
I do think that every now and then, you do need to specify dimensions. For instance, when specifying a button's width (in case you want it fixed).
Why would you want to have it fixed to absolute values? Say, in Qt if you want buttons to not grow when you resize dialog you set its "size policy" to either "Fixed" or "Maximum". You don't need to specify absolute values.
I'm not sure I understand: once you set a "size policy" to "fixed", it seems that you would need to set a fixed size (for a button, for instance).
"you would need" -- that's the key, "you" don't need to compute the size, Qt will do it itself. Each widget has sizeHint method that return preferred size. For button, that's that length of the text plus some extra space. If you set size policy to "fixed", Qt won't ever try to resize the widget above it's sizeHint. Works pretty nice.
(question aside: can you choose the "size policy" for each dimension like, left,top,width,height, or for the whole widget?)
There's separate size policy for width and height. As for left/top -- that's outside of widget control and in control of its parent. Of course the parent typically use the layout classes to control that, and does not set absolute positions. In fact, absolute positions are almost always wrong. Imagine you set a button width to fixed value, and day later I translate the text on button to Russian, possibly increasing its length twofold. That's why automatic layout is not just nice to have, but a requirement. - Volodya