Accessing the Interfaces directly
This page describes, how to write a new LCL control, using the various LCL interfaces for the platform dependent implementations.
OpenGL is a platform independent language for 3D graphics. The platform dependent part is to get a OpenGL context. Under linux/freebsd/X you use glx for that, under windows you use WGL and under MacOSX you can use AGL.
Every TWinControl has a Handle, and the LCL does not need to know, what a Handle is. The meaning of the Handle is totally up to the LCL interface:
- under gtk a Handle is often a PGtkWidget
- under windows a Handle is often a HWnd.
- under carbon a Handle is often a ControlRef
- under Qt, a Handle is often a pointer to a object descendent of TQtWidget.
Be aware that you should avoid relying on any widgetset specials. This page is for people improving the widgetsets and for people writting components that need to access the widgets directly.
Per-Widgetset Details
Qt
Handles on Qt are mostly pointers to objects. Every time a control is created, a helper object is also created and both are connected. The helper object is necessary to receive events from Qt. After receiving a event it will send it to the LCL.
Most of those objects are descendents from TQtWidget as declared bellow:
{ TQtWidget } TQtWidget = class(TObject) private public Widget: QWidgetH; LCLObject: TWinControl; end;
Notice the two variables they all contain:
- Widget - This is a connect to the Qt object for this Widget
- LCLObject - Is a bridge with the LCL object it is linked to.
List of Handles on various LCL classes
TFont
- Qt: A TQtFont object from qtprivate.pas
TCanvas
- Qt: A TQtDeviceContext object from qtprivate.pas
TBrush
- Qt: A TQtBrush object from qtprivate.pas
TBitmap
- Win32: HBITMAP
- Gtk: PGDIObject (defined on unit GtkDef)
- Qt: A QImageH qt object.
You can access this on Gtk using:
var GDIObject: PGDIObject; Bitmap: TBitmap; AImage: PGtkWidget; begin ... GDIObject := PgdiObject(Bitmap.Handle); AImage := gtk_image_new_from_pixmap(GDIObject^.GDIPixmapObject, GDIObject^.GDIBitmapMaskObject); gtk_widget_show(AImage); gtk_container_add(GTK_CONTAINER(MyForm.Handle), AImage); end;
TCustomForm
- Windows: it´s a HWND, a native window handle
- Gtk: It´s a pointer to a structure.
- Qt: The Handle is a pointer to a object from the TQtMainWindow class declared at qtprivate.pas. To have access to the QMainWindow Qt object it represents do: TQtMainWindow(Handle).Widget