forked from qt-creator/qt-creator
386ca7c8dd
Change-Id: Ice592c6de9951ee3b2c4cb52ed0bb3b6770e0825 Reviewed-by: Eike Ziller <eike.ziller@digia.com>
261 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
261 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
/****************************************************************************
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**
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** Copyright (c) 2012 Digia Plc and/or its subsidiary(-ies).
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** Contact: http://www.qt-project.org/legal
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**
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** This file is part of Qt Creator
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**
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**
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** GNU Free Documentation License
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**
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** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Free
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** Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software
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** Foundation and appearing in the file included in the packaging of this
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** file.
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**
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**
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****************************************************************************/
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/*!
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\contentspage{index.html}{Qt Creator}
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\previouspage external-tool-spec.html
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\page qtcreator-documentation.html
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\nextpage coding-style.html
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\title Writing Documentation
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When you add plugins or contribute new features to \QC, you probably want
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other people to know about them and to be able to use them. Therefore,
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you should also contribute documentation for them. Follow the guidelines in
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this section to make sure that your documentation fits in well with the rest
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of the \QC documentation.
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When you contribute a plugin, you should write documentation both for the
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developers who use \QC and for the ones who develop it.
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Write the following user documentation for addition to the \QC Manual:
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\list
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\o Overview topic, which describes the purpose of your plugin from the
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viewpoint of \QC users
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\o Procedure topics, which describe how to use your plugin as part of
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\QC
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\o Reference topics, which contain information that developers
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occasionally need to look up (optional)
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\endlist
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Write the following developer documentation for addition to the Extending
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\QC Manual:
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\list
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\o Overview topic, which describes the architecture and use cases for
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your plugin from the viewpoint of \QC developers
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\o API documentation, which is generated from code comments
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\endlist
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\section1 Configuring the Documentation Project
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\QC documentation is written by using QDoc. For more information about using
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QDoc, see \l{http://doc.qt.nokia.com/qdoc/}{QDoc Reference Documentation}.
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QDoc finds the new topics automatically, when you place them as .qdoc files
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in the correct folder. However, to make the topics accessible to readers,
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you must also add them to the table of contents and fix the next page and
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previous page links to them from other topics.
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\section2 Creating Folders and Files
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These instructions apply only to the \QC Manual. Add API documentation
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directly to the code source files. However, you can write an API overview
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also as a separate .qdoc file.
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Create a subfolder for your documentation in the \QC project folder in the
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\c {doc\src} folder. Create a separate file for each topic.
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The easiest way is probably to copy an existing file, save it as a new file,
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and modify it. This way, you already have samples of the necessary bits
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and pieces in place, such as topic start and end commands, copyright
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statement, links to next and previous topics, and topic title.
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\section2 Integrating Topics to Documentation
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You must integrate your new topics to the \QC Manual and Extending
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\QC Manual by adding links to them to the table of contents and to other
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relevant topics.
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To link to the topic, you can use the topic title. For example:
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\code
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\l{Integrating Topics to Documentation}
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\endcode
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This does not work if topic titles are not unique. Also, if you change the
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title, the link breaks. You can avoid this risk by adding the \c {\target}
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command to your topic and then linking to the target.
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\section2 Updating Next and Previous Links
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When you add new topics to a document, you must also change the navigation
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links of the topics around them. This is very error prone when done
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manually, and therefore we have a script called \c fixnavi.pl for it. For
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the script to work, you must add the \c {\nextpage} and \c {\previouspage}
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commands to the topic, with dummy values (for example,
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\c {\nextpage=anything.html}).
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\note The script creates the links according to the TOC on the front page.
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If your topics are not listed in the TOC, the script removes the
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\c {\nextpage} and \c {\previouspage} commands from them.
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To run the script, you must have Perl installed. If you build Qt yourself,
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you should already have it. Otherwise, download and install
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\l{http://www.perl.org/}{Perl}.
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To run the script, enter the following command in the doc folder:
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\list
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\o nmake fixnavi (on Windows)
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\o make fixnavi (on Linux)
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\endlist
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\section1 Writing Text
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Follow the guidelines for
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\l{http://developer.qt.nokia.com/wiki/Writing_Qt_Documentation}
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{writing Qt documentation}.
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The documentation must be grammatically correct English and use the standard
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form of written language. Do not use dialect or slang words. Use idiomatic
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language, that is, expressions that are characteristic for English.
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If possible, ask a native English speaker for a review.
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\section2 Capitalizing Headings
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Use the book title capitalization style for all titles and section headings
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(\c {\title}, \c {\section1}, \c {\section2}, and so on). For more
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information, see \l{Using Book Style Capitalization}.
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\section1 Using Images
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You can illustrate your documentation by using screen shots, diagrams, and
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other images.
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Save images in the PNG format in the \QC project folder in the
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\c {doc\images} folder. Binary images can easily add megabytes to the Git
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history. To keep the history as small as possible, the Git post-commit hooks
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remind you to try to keep image size below 50 kilobytes. To achieve this
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goal, crop images so that only relevant information is visible in them.
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Before committing images, optimize them by using the Radical Image
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Optimization Tool (RIOT).
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Use the \c {\image} and \c {\inlineimage} QDoc commands to refer to images
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from the text. You do not need to add paths to image names. For example:
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\code
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\image riot.png
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\endcode
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\section2 Optimizing Images
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Download and install \l{http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/}{RIOT}.
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\image riot.png
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Open your images in RIOT and use the following settings for them:
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\list
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\o Color reduction: Optimal 256 colors palette
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\o Reduce colors to: 256
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\o Best compression (slow)
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\o Color quantization algorithm: NeuQuant neural-net (slow)
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\o External optimizers: OptiPNG o3
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\endlist
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Compare the initial and optimized images to check that image quality is
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preserved. If the image quality deteriorates, do not use color reduction
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(select the \gui {True Color} option, instead).
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You can also see the sizes of the initial and optimized image.
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\section1 Building Documentation
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You use QDoc to build the documentation. Build the documentation from time
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to time, to check its structure and the validity of the QDoc commands.
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The error messages that QDoc issues are generally very useful for
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troubleshooting.
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The content and formatting of documentation are separated in QDoc.
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Separate style sheets are used to generate help files for \QC and online
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documentation for the Web.
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The documentation configuration, style sheets, and build process have
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changed over time, so they differ between Qt and \QC versions. To use the
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online style, use QDoc from Qt 4.7.4 to build the docs. To use the \QC help
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style, use QDoc from Qt 4.8, or later.
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To build documentation for the sources from the qtcreator master branch, use
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build scripts defined in the doc.pri file. To build all \QC docs in the
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help format and to create help files (.qch), enter the following build
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commands from the project folder:
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\list
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\o nmake docs (on Windows)
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\o make docs (on Linux)
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\endlist
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The following options generate HTML that uses the help style, and therefore
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require QDoc from Qt 4.8 or later:
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\list
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\o html_docs - build \QC Manual in help format, but do not generate a
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help file
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\o dev_html_docs - build Extending \QC Manual in help format, but do
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not generate a help file
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\o qch_docs - build \QC Manual in help format and generate a help file
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(.qch)
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\o dev_qch_docs - build Extending \QC Manual in help format and
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generate a help file (.qch)
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\endlist
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The following options generate HTML that uses the online style (they do not
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generate a help file), and therefore require QDoc from Qt 4.7.4:
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\list
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\o docs_online - build \QC Manual and Extending \QC Manual in online
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format
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\o html_docs_online - build \QC Manual in online format
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\o dev_html_docs_online - build Extending \QC Manual in online format
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\endlist
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*/
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