pyqt : dock on side of stacked qdockwidgets

Question

I've made a multi-docks window. To do that, I hide central widget, and I got it. But I have a problem (or more things maybe?). If the dock widgets are stacked on top of another, I can't dock the one the side of them. As seen with above figure, I just have to dock between docks. How can I adjust it? That's the whole code of mine.

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui

class Window(QtGui.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QMainWindow.__init__(self)        
        self.resize(800, 600)
        self.setWindowTitle(QtGui.QApplication.translate("self", "self", None, QtGui.QApplication.UnicodeUTF8))
        self.setDockOptions(QtGui.QMainWindow.AnimatedDocks)
        self.centralwidget = QtGui.QWidget(self)
        self.centralwidget.hide()
        self.setCentralWidget(self.centralwidget)        
        self.menubar = QtGui.QMenuBar(self)
        self.menubar.setGeometry(QtCore.QRect(0, 0, 800, 21))
        self.setMenuBar(self.menubar)
        self.statusbar = QtGui.QStatusBar(self)
        self.setStatusBar(self.statusbar)
        self.dock1Widget = QtGui.QDockWidget(self)
        self.dock1Widget.setFeatures(QtGui.QDockWidget.AllDockWidgetFeatures)
        self.dock1Widget.setWindowTitle(QtGui.QApplication.translate("self", "dock1", None, QtGui.QApplication.UnicodeUTF8))
        self.dock1WidgetContents = QtGui.QWidget()
        self.dock1Widget.setWidget(self.dock1WidgetContents)
        self.addDockWidget(QtCore.Qt.DockWidgetArea(1), self.dock1Widget)
        self.dock2Widget = QtGui.QDockWidget(self)
        self.dock2Widget.setFeatures(QtGui.QDockWidget.AllDockWidgetFeatures)
        self.dock2Widget.setWindowTitle(QtGui.QApplication.translate("self", "dock2", None, QtGui.QApplication.UnicodeUTF8))
        self.dock2WidgetContents = QtGui.QWidget()
        self.dock2Widget.setWidget(self.dock2WidgetContents)
        self.addDockWidget(QtCore.Qt.DockWidgetArea(1), self.dock2Widget)
        self.dock3Widget = QtGui.QDockWidget(self)
        self.dock3Widget.setFeatures(QtGui.QDockWidget.AllDockWidgetFeatures)
        self.dock3Widget.setWindowTitle(QtGui.QApplication.translate("self", "dock3", None, QtGui.QApplication.UnicodeUTF8))
        self.dock3WidgetContents = QtGui.QWidget()
        self.dock3Widget.setWidget(self.dock3WidgetContents)
        self.addDockWidget(QtCore.Qt.DockWidgetArea(1), self.dock3Widget)
        self.dock4Widget = QtGui.QDockWidget(self)
        self.dock4Widget.setFeatures(QtGui.QDockWidget.AllDockWidgetFeatures)
        self.dock4Widget.setWindowTitle(QtGui.QApplication.translate("self", "dock4", None, QtGui.QApplication.UnicodeUTF8))
        self.dock4WidgetContents = QtGui.QWidget()
        self.dock4Widget.setWidget(self.dock4WidgetContents)
        self.addDockWidget(QtCore.Qt.DockWidgetArea(1), self.dock4Widget)

if __name__ == '__main__':

    import sys
    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    window = Window()
    window.show()
    app.exec_()

Answer 1

Without a centralWidget a single dockWidgetArea can expand all the way and make all other dock areas unaccessible.

One possible solution is using nested docks (AllowNestedDocks). This will allow you to stack dock widgets more freely. It's not exactly the same behavior but maybe more flexible. Set your docking options like this:

self.setDockOptions(QtGui.QMainWindow.AnimatedDocks | QtGui.QMainWindow.AllowNestedDocks)

By the way, if you don't want a central widget, you can just not set it. Default value is NULL and this has the same effect of setting a dummy widget and hiding.