qt-creator/doc/api/qtcreator-documentation.qdoc

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/*!
    \contentspage{index.html}{Qt Creator}
    \previouspage external-tool-spec.html
    \page qtcreator-documentation.html
    \nextpage coding-style.html

    \title Writing Documentation

    When you add plugins or contribute new features to \QC, you probably want
    other people to know about them and to be able to use them. Therefore,
    you should also contribute documentation for them. Follow the guidelines in
    this section to make sure that your documentation fits in well with the rest
    of the \QC documentation.

    When you contribute a plugin, you should write documentation both for the
    developers who use \QC and for the ones who develop it.

    Write the following user documentation for addition to the \QC Manual:

    \list

        \o  Overview topic, which describes the purpose of your plugin from the
            viewpoint of \QC users

        \o  Procedure topics, which describe how to use your plugin as part of
            \QC

        \o  Reference topics, which contain information that developers
            occasionally need to look up (optional)

    \endlist

    Write the following developer documentation for addition to the Extending
    \QC Manual:

    \list

        \o  Overview topic, which describes the architecture and use cases for
            your plugin from the viewpoint of \QC developers

        \o  API documentation, which is generated from code comments

    \endlist

    \section1 Configuring the Documentation Project

    \QC documentation is written by using QDoc. For more information about using
    QDoc, see \l{http://doc.qt.nokia.com/qdoc/}{QDoc Reference Documentation}.

    QDoc finds the new topics automatically, when you place them as .qdoc files
    in the correct folder. However, to make the topics accessible to readers,
    you must also add them to the table of contents and fix the next page and
    previous page links to them from other topics.

    \section2 Creating Folders and Files

    These instructions apply only to the \QC Manual. Add API documentation
    directly to the code source files. However, you can write an API overview
    also as a separate .qdoc file.

    Create a subfolder for your documentation in the \QC project folder in the
    \c {doc\src} folder. Create a separate file for each topic.

    The easiest way is probably to copy an existing file, save it as a new file,
    and modify it. This way, you already have samples of the necessary bits
    and pieces in place, such as topic start and end commands, copyright
    statement, links to next and previous topics, and topic title.

    \section2 Integrating Topics to Documentation

    You must integrate your new topics to the \QC Manual and Extending
    \QC Manual by adding links to them to the table of contents and to other
    relevant topics.

    To link to the topic, you can use the topic title. For example:

    \code

    \l{Integrating Topics to Documentation}

    \endcode

    This does not work if topic titles are not unique. Also, if you change the
    title, the link breaks. You can avoid this risk by adding the \c {\target}
    command to your topic and then linking to the target.

    \section2 Updating Next and Previous Links

    When you add new topics to a document, you must also change the navigation
    links of the topics around them. This is very error prone when done
    manually, and therefore we have a script called \c fixnavi.pl for it. For
    the script to work, you must add the \c {\nextpage} and \c {\previouspage}
    commands to the topic, with dummy values (for example,
    \c {\nextpage=anything.html}).

    \note The script creates the links according to the TOC on the front page.
    If your topics are not listed in the TOC, the script removes the
    \c {\nextpage} and \c {\previouspage} commands from them.

    To run the script, you must have Perl installed. If you build Qt yourself,
    you should already have it. Otherwise, download and install
    \l{http://www.perl.org/}{Perl}.

    To run the script, enter the following command in the doc folder:

    \list

        \o  nmake fixnavi (on Windows)

        \o  make fixnavi (on Linux)

    \endlist

    \section1 Writing Text

    Follow the guidelines for
    \l{http://developer.qt.nokia.com/wiki/Writing_Qt_Documentation}
    {writing Qt documentation}.

    The documentation must be grammatically correct English and use the standard
    form of written language. Do not use dialect or slang words. Use idiomatic
    language, that is, expressions that are characteristic for English.
    If possible, ask a native English speaker for a review.

    \section2 Capitalizing Headings

    Use the book title capitalization style for all titles and section headings
    (\c {\title}, \c {\section1}, \c {\section2}, and so on). For more
    information, see \l{Using Book Style Capitalization}.

    \section1 Using Images

    You can illustrate your documentation by using screen shots, diagrams, and
    other images.

    Save images in the PNG format in the \QC project folder in the
    \c {doc\images} folder. Binary images can easily add megabytes to the Git
    history. To keep the history as small as possible, the Git post-commit hooks
    remind you to try to keep image size below 50 kilobytes. To achieve this
    goal, crop images so that only relevant information is visible in them.
    Before committing images, optimize them by using the Radical Image
    Optimization Tool (RIOT).

    Use the \c {\image} and \c {\inlineimage} QDoc commands to refer to images
    from the text. You do not need to add paths to image names. For example:

    \code

    \image riot.png

    \endcode

    \section2 Optimizing Images

    Download and install \l{http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/}{RIOT}.

    \image riot.png

    Open your images in RIOT and use the following settings for them:

    \list

        \o  Color reduction: Optimal 256 colors palette

        \o  Reduce colors to: 256

        \o  Best compression (slow)

        \o  Color quantization algorithm: NeuQuant neural-net (slow)

        \o  External optimizers: OptiPNG o3

    \endlist

    Compare the initial and optimized images to check that image quality is
    preserved. If the image quality deteriorates, do not use color reduction
    (select the \gui {True Color} option, instead).

    You can also see the sizes of the initial and optimized image.

    \section1 Building Documentation

    You use QDoc to build the documentation. Build the documentation from time
    to time, to check its structure and the validity of the QDoc commands.
    The error messages that QDoc issues are generally very useful for
    troubleshooting.

    The content and formatting of documentation are separated in QDoc.
    Separate style sheets are used to generate help files for \QC and online
    documentation for the Web.

    The documentation configuration, style sheets, and build process have
    changed over time, so they differ between Qt and \QC versions. To use the
    online style, use QDoc from Qt 4.7.4 to build the docs. To use the \QC help
    style, use QDoc from Qt 4.8, or later.

    To build documentation for the sources from the qtcreator master branch, use
    build scripts defined in the doc.pri file. To build all \QC docs in the
    help format and to create help files (.qch), enter the following build
    commands from the project folder:

    \list

        \o  nmake docs (on Windows)
        \o  make docs (on Linux)

    \endlist

    The following options generate HTML that uses the help style, and therefore
    require QDoc from Qt 4.8 or later:

    \list

        \o  html_docs - build \QC Manual in help format, but do not generate a
            help file

        \o  dev_html_docs - build Extending \QC Manual in help format, but do
            not generate a help file

        \o  qch_docs - build \QC Manual in help format and generate a help file
            (.qch)

        \o  dev_qch_docs - build Extending \QC Manual in help format and
            generate a help file (.qch)

    \endlist

    The following options generate HTML that uses the online style (they do not
    generate a help file), and therefore require QDoc from Qt 4.7.4:

    \list

        \o  docs_online - build \QC Manual and Extending \QC Manual in online
            format

        \o  html_docs_online - build \QC Manual in online format

        \o  dev_html_docs_online - build Extending \QC Manual in online format

    \endlist

*/