source: trunk/src/gui/painting/qpaintdevice.qdoc@ 574

/****************************************************************************
**
** 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].
** $QT_END_LICENSE$
**
****************************************************************************/

/*!
    \class QPaintDevice
    \brief The QPaintDevice class is the base class of objects that
    can be painted.

    \ingroup painting

    A paint device is an abstraction of a two-dimensional space that
    can be drawn using a QPainter.  Its default coordinate system has
    its origin located at the top-left position. X increases to the
    right and Y increases downwards. The unit is one pixel.

    The drawing capabilities of QPaintDevice are currently implemented
    by the QWidget, QImage, QPixmap, QGLPixelBuffer, QPicture, and
    QPrinter subclasses.

    To implement support for a new backend, you must derive from
    QPaintDevice and reimplement the virtual paintEngine() function to
    tell QPainter which paint engine should be used to draw on this
    particular device. Note that you also must create a corresponding
    paint engine to be able to draw on the device, i.e derive from
    QPaintEngine and reimplement its virtual functions.

    \warning Qt requires that a QApplication object exists before
    any paint devices can be created. Paint devices access window
    system resources, and these resources are not initialized before
    an application object is created.

    The QPaintDevice class provides several functions returning the
    various device metrics: The depth() function returns its bit depth
    (number of bit planes). The height() function returns its height
    in default coordinate system units (e.g. pixels for QPixmap and
    QWidget) while heightMM() returns the height of the device in
    millimeters. Similiarily, the width() and widthMM() functions
    return the width of the device in default coordinate system units
    and in millimeters, respectively. Alternatively, the protected
    metric() function can be used to retrieve the metric information
    by specifying the desired PaintDeviceMetric as argument.

    The logicalDpiX() and logicalDpiY() functions return the
    horizontal and vertical resolution of the device in dots per
    inch. The physicalDpiX() and physicalDpiY() functions also return
    the resolution of the device in dots per inch, but note that if
    the logical and physical resolution differ, the corresponding
    QPaintEngine must handle the mapping. Finally, the colorCount()
    function returns the number of different colors available for the
    paint device.

    \sa QPaintEngine, QPainter, {The Coordinate System}, {The Paint
    System}
*/

/*!
    \enum QPaintDevice::PaintDeviceMetric

    Describes the various metrics of a paint device.

    \value PdmWidth The width of the paint device in default
    coordinate system units (e.g. pixels for QPixmap and QWidget). See
    also width().

    \value PdmHeight The height of the paint device in default
    coordinate system units (e.g. pixels for QPixmap and QWidget). See
    also height().

    \value PdmWidthMM The width of the paint device in millimeters. See
    also widthMM().

    \value PdmHeightMM  The height of the paint device in millimeters. See
    also heightMM().

    \value PdmNumColors The number of different colors available for
    the paint device. See also colorCount().

    \value PdmDepth The bit depth (number of bit planes) of the paint
    device. See also depth().

    \value PdmDpiX The horizontal resolution of the device in dots per
    inch. See also logicalDpiX().

    \value PdmDpiY  The vertical resolution of the device in dots per inch. See
    also logicalDpiY().

    \value PdmPhysicalDpiX The horizontal resolution of the device in
    dots per inch. See also physicalDpiX().

    \value PdmPhysicalDpiY The vertical resolution of the device in
    dots per inch. See also physicalDpiY().

    \sa metric()
*/

/*!
    \fn QPaintDevice::QPaintDevice()

    Constructs a paint device. This constructor can be invoked only from
    subclasses of QPaintDevice.
*/

/*!
    \fn QPaintDevice::~QPaintDevice()

    Destroys the paint device and frees window system resources.
*/

/*!
    \fn int QPaintDevice::devType() const

    \internal

    Returns the device type identifier, which is QInternal::Widget
    if the device is a QWidget, QInternal::Pixmap if it's a
    QPixmap, QInternal::Printer if it's a QPrinter,
    QInternal::Picture if it's a QPicture, or
    QInternal::UnknownDevice in other cases.
*/

/*!
    \fn bool QPaintDevice::paintingActive() const

    Returns true if the device is currently being painted on, i.e. someone has
    called QPainter::begin() but not yet called QPainter::end() for
    this device; otherwise returns false.

    \sa QPainter::isActive()
*/

/*!
    \fn QPaintEngine *QPaintDevice::paintEngine() const

    Returns a pointer to the paint engine used for drawing on the
    device.
*/

/*!
    \fn int QPaintDevice::metric(PaintDeviceMetric metric) const

    Returns the metric information for  the given paint device \a metric.

    \sa PaintDeviceMetric
*/

/*!
    \fn int QPaintDevice::width() const

    Returns the width of the paint device in default coordinate system
    units (e.g. pixels for QPixmap and QWidget).

    \sa widthMM()
*/

/*!
    \fn int QPaintDevice::height() const

    Returns the height of the paint device in default coordinate
    system units (e.g. pixels for QPixmap and QWidget).

    \sa heightMM()
*/

/*!
    \fn int QPaintDevice::widthMM() const

    Returns the width of the paint device in millimeters. Due to platform
    limitations it may not be possible to use this function to determine
    the actual physical size of a widget on the screen.

    \sa width()
*/

/*!
    \fn int QPaintDevice::heightMM() const

    Returns the height of the paint device in millimeters. Due to platform
    limitations it may not be possible to use this function to determine
    the actual physical size of a widget on the screen.