source: trunk/doc/src/platforms/x11overlays.qdoc@ 564

/****************************************************************************
**
** Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).
** All rights reserved.
** Contact: Nokia Corporation ([email protected])
**
** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit.
**
** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$
** Commercial Usage
** Licensees holding valid Qt Commercial licenses may use this file in
** accordance with the Qt Commercial License Agreement provided with the
** Software or, alternatively, in accordance with the terms contained in
** a written agreement between you and Nokia.
**
** 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.
**
** GNU General Public License Usage
** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU
** General Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software
** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the
** packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to
** ensure the GNU General Public License version 3.0 requirements will be
** met: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
**
** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact
** Nokia at [email protected].
** $QT_END_LICENSE$
**
****************************************************************************/

/*!
    \page x11overlays.html
    \title How to Use X11 Overlays with Qt

    X11 overlays are a powerful mechanism for drawing
    annotations etc., on top of an image without destroying it, thus saving
    a great deal of image rendering time. For more information, see the highly
    recommended book \e{OpenGL Programming for the X Window System} (Mark
    Kilgard, Addison Wesley Developers Press 1996).

    \warning The Qt OpenGL Extension includes direct support for the
    use of OpenGL overlays. For many uses of overlays, this makes the
    technique described below redundant. The following is a discussion
    on how to use non-QGL widgets in overlay planes.

    In the typical case, X11 overlays can easily be used together with the
    current version of Qt and the Qt OpenGL Extension. The following
    requirements apply:

    \list 1
    \i Your X server and graphics card/hardware must support overlays.
       For many X servers, overlay support can be turned on with
       a configuration option; consult your X server installation
       documentation.

    \i Your X server must (be configured to) use an overlay visual as the
       default visual. Most modern X servers do this, since this has the
       added advantage that pop-up menus, overlapping windows etc., will
       \e not affect underlying images in the main plane, thereby
       avoiding expensive redraws.

    \i The best (deepest) visual for OpenGL rendering is in the main
       plane. This is the normal case. Typically, X servers that support
       overlays provide a 24-bit \c TrueColor visual in the main plane,
       and an 8-bit \c PseudoColor (default) visual in the overlay plane.
    \endlist

    Assuming that the requirements mentioned above are met, a
    QGLWidget will default to using the main plane visual, while all
    other widgets will use the overlay visual. Thus, we can place a
    normal widget on top of the QGLWidget, and do drawing on it,
    without affecting the image in the OpenGL window. In other words,
    we can use all the drawing capabilities of QPainter to draw
    annotations, rubberbands, etc. For the typical use of overlays,
    this is much easier than using OpenGL for rendering annotations.

    An overlay plane has a specific color called the transparent
    color. Pixels drawn in this color will not be visible; instead
    the underlying OpenGL image will show through.

    To use this technique, you must not use the
    QApplication::ManyColor or QApplication::TrueColor color
    specification for QApplication, because this will force the
    normal Qt widgets to use a \c TrueColor visual, which will
    typically be in the main plane, not in the overlay plane as
    desired.
*/