Selected objects on Mac show background highlight instead of bounding rectangle highlight

Question

I have a Qt application that I am porting to mac.

There are some objects (images) shown in QListView or QTableView, in IconMode, that, when selected, in Windows and Linux get highlighted (a rectangle holding the object, which has colored background - gray if the item is selected but no focus, light blue if the item has focus, slightly more intense blue if the item is selected and has focus - this is probably the default behavior for selection, based on selected color scheme).

On mac the only thing that shows is a tiny dot under the object, and if the object in the view is transparent, light blue shows inside the object - but no selection rectangle. Nothing changes if the object has focus, and if the object is not transparent, only the tiny dot under the object shows.

Once objects are moved on the canvas, mac shows selection as needed, on a bounding rectangle, only inside the listview and tableview the bounding rectangle is invisible.

The form was created using the Designer... the listView property QListView.selectionRectVisible is checked.

I can't see what makes that happen... but I have tried

#if defined (Q_OS_MACX)
    m_ui->lv1->setAttribute(Qt::WA_MacShowFocusRect, true);
    m_ui->lv1->UseCustomSelectionColors(true);  // documentation shows this but it doesn't build
    m_ui->lv1->setSelectionRectVisible(true);
#endif

for the mac, and it does not make any difference.

What else can I try, to show selection of objects ?

Qt 4.8

Edit: found a site that has an example for a tiled list view... among other things it draws a visible rectangle around the selected items...

It seems like a very complicated way to do something that seems to be already implemented - highlighting a selected object - I will do it if I have to but I am hoping that I do not have to add something too complicated for the mac version, that will not be used in any other platforms...

There has to be a way to use the normal properties and methods of listview and tableview to make sure that the background of the bounding rectangle, not just the background of the item, shows when a selection is made ?

I don't know if this is a typical mac behavior...

Update

While I really try not to overwrite the desired default system behavior, I tried to force list behavior...

#if defined (Q_OS_MACX)
    QString stylesheet = "";
    stylesheet += "QListView::item:selected:active:hover{background-color:red;}";
    stylesheet += "QListView::item:selected:active:!hover{background-color:blue;}";
    stylesheet += "QListView::item:selected:!active{background-color:yellow;}";
    stylesheet += "QListView::item:!selected:hover{background-color:green;}";
    setStyleSheet(stylesheet);
#endif

The problem is, I need the system colors, I cannot define my own since they will not match the rest of the app window...

What are the names of the system colors for hover, select (strong), select (but no focus), select (but not active) ?

I have tried using

stylesheet += "QListView::item:selected:active:hover{background-color:Highlight;}";

In windows, this looks ok - because it probably is not recognized so it is ignored... On mac, still ignored. And I have not seen any other names for backgrounds. I tried it with lowercase as well.

Are you considering as the option Qt Stylesheets? I believe, that it's possible in the stylesheets to specify specific selection color only for mac platform. — Max Go
@N1ghtLight - I have updated with trying to use a stylesheet, with no success — Thalia

Thalia Thalia · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-01T15:01:31

I ended up using a style sheet - as in the update to my question - with hard-coded color values for the osx blue theme.

Selected objects on Mac show background highlight instead of bounding rectangle highlight

1 Answers