Global Strut Feature

With todays variety of devices KDE runs on, it is getting harder to support them equally well in applications. With display resolutions getting higher, touchscreen interfaces demand bigger controls to keep them accessible. You can often get these by just increasing the font size. Some widgets, however, do not scale well (such as scroll bars), and this is where Qt’s “global strut” feature comes in.

To try this, run the “qtconfig” application, and change the minimum width/height values on the “Interface” page. Now applications should respect these sizes for clickable controls.

qtconfig Global Strut

For Skulpture 0.2 the layouting code has been much improved. Not only does it support configuring the size of (and spacing between) elements, but also fully supports the global strut feature. As a special bonus, Skulpture makes sure even spin up/down controls stay accessible in spin boxes by placing them next to instead of above each other. You might also appreciate this feature, if you are just a mouse or pen user.

Skulpture with 20x20 pixels global strut

6 thoughts on “Global Strut Feature”

  2. The spinbox would be even more accessible for finger-usage if the up botton would be on the right of the spinbox, and the down button on the left. I have made a control like that long ago for a Qt2 based Qtopia application that was mend to be usable with fingers, and it worked well.

  3. @Andre, this is a good idea, I will try this in a future version. Using the ComplexControlLayout class this might be even simple to implement. More on this class in a future blog, then about scroll bar arrow positions 🙂

  4. Hey,
    I really do like the Sculpture theme. One feature request I’d have for the Windeco, though, would be to (optionally) further reduce the border size. With Kwin’s window border, I’d love to have a nearly-zero (or even zero) window border width (as a configuration option).
    Cheers,
    Frando

  5. @Frando, this is already possible with Skulpture 0.2.2. For the title bar size, the option is on the “Title” tab, the border sizes are on the “Frame” tab. Vertical and horizontal border sizes can be configured separately, so you can make either of them zero pixels.

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