Question

I needed some help in trying to optimize this code portion … Basically here’s the thing .. I’m making this ‘calligraphy pen’ which gives the calligraphy effect by simply drawing a lot of adjacent slanted lines … The problem is this: When I update the draw region using update() after every single draw of a slanted line, the output is correct, in the sense that updates are done in a timely manner, so that everything ‘drawn’ using the pen is immediately ‘seen’ the drawing.. however, because a lot (100s of them) of updates are done, the program slows down a little when run on the N900 …

When I try to do a little optimization by running update after drawing all the slanted lines (so that all lines are updated onto the drawing board through a single update() ), the output is … odd …. That is, immediately after drawing the lines, they lines seem broken (they have vacant patches where the drawing should have happened as well) … however, if I trigger a redrawing of the form window (say, by changing the size of the form), the broken patches are immediately fixed !! When I run this program on my N900, it gets the initial broken output and stays like that, since I don’t know how to enforce a redraw in this case …

Here is the first ‘optimized’ code and output (partially correct/incorrect)

void Canvas::drawLineTo(const QPoint &endPoint)
{
QPainter painter(&image);
painter.setPen(QPen(Qt::black,1,Qt::SolidLine,Qt::RoundCap,Qt::RoundJoin));
int fx=0,fy=0,k=0;
qPoints.clear();
connectingPointsCalculator2(qPoints,lastPoint.x(),lastPoint.y(),endPoint.x(),endPoint.y());
int i=0;
int x,y;
for(i=0;i<qPoints.size();i++)
{
x=qPoints.at(i).x();
y=qPoints.at(i).y();
painter.setPen(Qt::black);
painter.drawLine(x-5,y-5,x+5,y+5); **// Drawing slanted lines**
}
**//Updating only once after many draws:**
update (QRect(QPoint(lastPoint.x()-5,lastPoint.y()-5), QPoint(endPoint.x()+5,endPoint.y()+5)).normalized());

modified = true;
lastPoint = endPoint;
}

Image right after scribbling on screen:

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8755/59943912.png

After re-adjusting the window size, all the broken links above are fixed like they should be ..

Here is the second un-optimized code (its output is correct right after drawing, just like in the second picture above):

void Canvas::drawLineTo(const QPoint &endPoint)
{
QPainter painter(&image);
painter.setPen(QPen(Qt::black,1,Qt::SolidLine,Qt::RoundCap,Qt::RoundJoin));
int fx=0,fy=0,k=0;
qPoints.clear();
connectingPointsCalculator2(qPoints,lastPoint.x(),lastPoint.y(),endPoint.x(),endPoint.y());
int i=0;
int x,y;
for(i=0;i<qPoints.size();i++)
{
x=qPoints.at(i).x();
y=qPoints.at(i).y();
painter.setPen(Qt::black);
painter.drawLine(x-5,y-5,x+5,y+5); **// Drawing slanted lines**
**//Updating repeatedly during the for loop:**
update(QRect(QPoint(x-5,y-5), QPoint(x+5,y+5)).normalized());//.adjusted(-rad,-rad,rad,rad));
}
modified = true;
int rad = (myPenWidth / 2) + 2;
lastPoint = endPoint;
}

Can anyone see what the issue might be ?

Answer 1

As I understand you should find min and max of x and y processed in your for-loop and use them in update(QRect(QPoint(minX-5, minY-5), QPoint(maxX+5, maxY+5)).normalized());