I want to use QTAxis, is it meant to be used?

I might be crazy but it seems to be faster at rendering and other operations than classic axis is, but I'm having a difficult time with it.

First off though, is it intended to be used? I've just got a desktop router here, and I intend to supply patches to it if wanted to improve things.

I have a problem with the ratios of the screen being used. When full screen the bottom 50% of the window is a very large gcode display, and the upper 50% is a small set of controls on the left and a wide but short preview window on the right. I'd like to know if this is a thing you should change with styles, designer, or as a configuration option.

Thanks for any input

--hachi

I want to clarify that my question about whether this is meant to be used is because I've only seen this in the context of "sample screens"

I also had questions about warnings coming from QTVCP in my original version of this post, but the forum rejected it saying I had "too many links"

The short version of my questions there are... what should the toolchange process work like in qtaxis? If I disable hal_manualtoolchange like the warnings say, it will send me an operator message to change the tool, but no dialog will pop up, so there's nothing for me to acknowledge the tool change with.

It was intended to be usable but my development time moved to qtdragon as there wa smore feed back from people using it. It's in 'sample screens' because it was not polished enough and I was not sure of public's interest.

If you are interested to use it and need mods/fixes I will do my best to help.

qt will check if (The AXIS style) manual_toolchange is already loaded. If it is, qt will do nothing.
If it isn't qt will load it's own version, which uses the same named pins.
Sao make sure the AXIS version is not loaded.
You still need to connect those pins in the postgui file.

net tool-change hal_manualtoolchange.change iocontrol.0.tool-change
net tool-changed hal_manualtoolchange.changed iocontrol.0.tool-changed
net tool-prep-number hal_manualtoolchange.number iocontrol.0.tool-prep-number

In general it's best to use Designer to get the layout as close to desired first, then use python/stylesheets to tweak personal preferences.

What version of linuxcnc are you using? If you post your configuration files I can look into the tool change dialog problem.

Oh, I thought I saw people here on the forum saying to disconnect the pins, but I'll move them to postgui that's probably the problem.

I'll start tweaking parts and let you know about what problems I see.

At the moment I'm on the released 2.6.2, but I can move to nightly builds if I want to try things.

All right,

Connecting those pins works fine, thank you for that hint.

The first couple of minor things I have trouble with in qtaxis are:

- The MDI box starts scrolled up to the top
- The MDI box doesn't show the last line if a horizontal scrollbar is there
- I would suggest moving the Tool indicator next to the spindle speed indicator.
- The reload file button doesn't seem to actually reload the file... I'm not sure what it does.
- Resizing the left bar and gcode view area could maybe be draggable
- If you open the 'open file' window, escape doesn't close it, instead pops up the 'exit linuxcnc' screen.

Now, I'm going to fire up designer and see if any of these are things I can comprehend fixing.

You are welcome to teach me to fish, or not. Thank you for making this.

--hachi

I have a first attempt at making resizable sections of the window to show to you, but it's 3am and my brain is mush so I'll make a branch for you to look at tomorrow.

In dealing with QT Designer to adjust things like this I get the feeling that some of the UI elements like the left tab structure, and the status and adjustment sliders should be made into widgets that are defined in a different file, otherwise the structure of the window becomes a deep tree... and that can lead to some unintended behaviors when a person tries to change the high level layout.

for the load last button - do you have the preference fine set up in the INI
PREFERENCE_FILE_PATH = WORKINGFOLDER/qtaxis.pref

Yes I have meant to look at the MDI scroll problem.

Escape button is a Qtvcp default keyBinding and could be redefined,

QSplitter is what to use to have a dragable window split. From memory it's kinda hidden in Qtdesigner - google is your friend.

Here's a first pass at making the window splitter rather than layout, but it's untested:

github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/compare/mas...achi/qtaxis-splitter

Making the XML diff be sane for the first commit was a bit of a headache, but I wanted you to be able to see that it was almost no changes to switch it.

I only set the left box to be up to 100px wider as an arbitrary choice... I'm not sure if making it collapsible could be useful, but I turned it off for now.

For the right panel is there an easy way to make it appear, or do I need to create a thing for that?

Do you mean to add a panel on the very right side?
Sample INI:
[DISPLAY]
EMBED_TAB_NAME=Right side demo
EMBED_TAB_COMMAND=qtvcp vismach_mill_xyz
EMBED_TAB_LOCATION=rightPanel

qtvcp usage output says final arg should be a .ui file (first line in the output) though I think it actually can be both a .ui file and a screen name? I'm not sure