SD: States and Styles

Links

• Forum Thread (by Foaly)
• Longer discuss on GitHub issue #744
• Reference implementation (macOS & Windows) by Foaly

Current Situation

Currently SFML (2.5) doesn't strictly differentiate between window states and window styles. The following APIs exist for manipulating window's styles and states:

• Constructor / create(...) function that takes a bit field of sf::Style
  • sf::Style::None - Borderless window
  • sf::Style::Titlebar- Window with titlebar
  • sf::Style::Resize - Resizable window
  • sf::Style::Close - Window with close button
  • sf::Style::Fullscreen - Fullscreen mode
  • sf::Style::Default - Combination of Titlebar, Resize and Close
• setVisible(bool) - Hide or show window

The limitations of this design are:

• Mixing of window styling (borderless, titlebar, close button, etc.) and window state (windowed, fullscreen, hidden, etc.)
• Window has to be recreated for changing a style or switching between window and fullscreen mode
• No support to programmatically maximize or minimize a window
• The constructor parameter list is relatively long, because the window is instantly shown at creation, instead of letting the user configure the window with dedicated functions before showing it

Target Situation

API

• Constructor / create(...) function that takes a bit field of sf::Style
  • sf::Style::None - Borderless window
  • sf::Style::Titlebar- Window with titlebar
  • sf::Style::Resize - Resizable window
  • sf::Style::Close - Window with close button
  • sf::Style::Fullscreen - (deprecated) Fullscreen mode
  • sf::Style::Default - Combination of Titlebar, Resize and Close
• setState(sf::State) - new Change window state
  • sf::State::Minimized - Minimize the window
  • sf::State::Maximized - Maximize the window
  • sf::State::Floating (or sf::State::Windowed) - "Normal" window mode
  • sf::State::Fullscreen - Fullscreen mode
  • sf::State::Hidden - new Create window hidden initially
• setVisible(bool) - Hide or show window

OS Support

Feature	Windows	Unix	macOS
Initially hidden window
Minimize
Maximize
Mode switching without recreation
Titlebar	x	x	x
Borderless	x	x	x
Resizable	x	x	x
Close button	x	x	x
Minimize button
Maximize button