KDDockWidgets

KDDockWidgets is a KDAB effort to provide an advanced docking system for Qt.

Throughout the years KDAB has contributed and funded bug fixes and features to QDockWidget. Sadly, the QDockWidget code is in such a state that each bug fix took many days and sometimes caused regressions. The codebase mixes GUI code, with logic, with state in a spaghetti manner, which makes it very hard to move forward with new features.

In hindsight, what led to QDockWidget complexity is that is supports a multitude of options and a exponential number of option combinations, times 3 platforms. From talking with our customers we gathered that none of them cared about most of those options, and all of them wanted the same 3 or 4 missing features.

This framework is under active development and has no planned release date yet.

Goals

• Provide advanced docking that QDockWidgets doesn't support:

  • nesting dock widgets in a floating window and docking that group back to main window
  • nesting in any main window
  • docking to center of main window
  • main window supporting detachable tabs in center widget
  • different forms of docking indicators (through plugins)
  • detaching arbitrary tabs from a tab bar into a dock area

• Discard unneeded features present in QDockWidgets that make the code complicated

• Clean codebase

  • Not mixing GUI with state with logic with animations
  • Unit-test everything, even the GUI and DnD operations

Licensing

This software is provided as GPLv2 (See LICENSE.GPL.txt) or, alternatively, contact KDAB at [email protected] if you need different licensing.