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qt-creator/doc/qtcreatordev/src/qtcreator-documentation.qdoc
Leena Miettinen bd17dd445b Doc: Add instructions for using the \youtube macro 
The macro shows a thumbnail with a play button to start the
video.

Change-Id: If4dcddfbdbc40e795f4306e83ede43187dd2439c
Reviewed-by: Johanna Vanhatapio <johanna.vanhatapio@qt.io>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Hartmann <thomas.hartmann@qt.io>
2020-11-30 10:12:00 +00:00

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/****************************************************************************
**
** Copyright (C) 2020 The Qt Company Ltd.
** Contact: https://www.qt.io/licensing/
**
** This file is part of the Qt Creator documentation.
**
** Commercial License Usage
** Licensees holding valid commercial Qt licenses may use this file in
** accordance with the commercial license agreement provided with the
** Software or, alternatively, in accordance with the terms contained in
** a written agreement between you and The Qt Company. For licensing terms
** and conditions see https://www.qt.io/terms-conditions. For further
** information use the contact form at https://www.qt.io/contact-us.
**
** GNU Free Documentation License Usage
** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Free
** Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software
** Foundation and appearing in the file included in the packaging of
** this file. Please review the following information to ensure
** the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 requirements
** will be met: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html.
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****************************************************************************/
/*!
\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 or as
a separate Plugin Manual if your plugin is located in a repository of its
own:
\list
\li Overview topic, which describes the purpose of your plugin from the
viewpoint of \QC users
\li Procedure topics, which describe how to use your plugin as part of \QC
\li 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
\li Overview topic, which describes the architecture and use cases for
your plugin from the viewpoint of \QC developers
\li API documentation, which is generated from code comments
\endlist
\section1 Configuring Documentation Projects
\QC documentation is written by using QDoc. For more information about using
QDoc, see the \l{https://doc.qt.io/qt/qdoc-index.html}{QDoc Manual}.
QDoc finds the new topics automatically, when you place them as \c {.qdoc}
files in a doc source 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.
\section1 Creating Folders and Files
The \c qtcreator repository contains the sources for building the following
documents:
\list
\li \QC Manual
\li Extending \QC Manual
\li \QDS Manual
\endlist
The sources for each project are stored in the following subfolders of
the \QC project folder:
\list
\li \c \doc\qtcreator\src
\li \c \doc\qtcreatordev\src
\li \c \doc\qtdesignstudio\src
\endlist
The \QDS Manual is based on the \QC Manual, with additional topics.
The Extending \QC Manual has its own sources. In addition, it
pulls in API reference documentation from the \QC source files. Add
code documentation directly to the code source files. However, you can
write an API overview also as a separate \c {.qdoc} file.
Create a subfolder for your documentation in the appropriate \c 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.
\section1 Integrating Topics to Documentation
You must integrate your new topics to the manuals 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:
\badcode
\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 Showing and Hiding Information
\QDS uses only a subset of \QC plugins and it has its own special plugins.
This means that their manuals have somewhat different structures. Which, in
turn breaks the navigation links to previous and next pages.
This also means that some of the \QC Manual source files are not needed at
all and some contain information that does not apply to the \QDS Manual. If
QDoc parsed all the \QC Manual sources, it would generate HTML files for each
topic and include those files and all the images that they refer to in the
\QDS help compilation files. This would unnecessarily increase the size of
the \QDS help database and pollute the help index with references to files
that are not actually listed in the table of contents of the \QDS Manual.
To avoid this, some files are excluded from the \QDS Manual builds.
\section3 Excluding Source Files from \QDS Manual Builds
The directories to exclude from \QDS Manual builds are
listed as values of the \c excludedirs option in
\c {\doc\qtdesignstudio\config\qtdesignstudio.qdocconf}.
You only need to edit the values of the option if you want to show or hide
all the contents of a directory. For example, if you add support for a \QC
plugin that was previously not supported by \QDS, you should remove the
directory that contains the documentation for the plugin from the values.
To hide or show individual topics within individual \c {.qdoc} files, you
need to move the files in the \QC Manual source (\c \doc\qtcreator\src) to
or from the excluded directories.
For example, if support for iOS were added, you would need to check whether
the information about iOS support is applicable to \QDS Manual. If yes,
you would need to remove the following line from the \c excludedirs value:
\badcode
../../src/ios \
\endcode
You would then use defines to hide any \QC specific information from the
source file in the directory.
If a directory contains some files that are needed in both manuals and some
that are only needed in the \QC Manual, the latter are located in a
subdirectory called \c {creator-only}, which is excluded from the \QDS
Manual builds.
\section3 Hiding Text in \QC Manual Sources
The \c qtcreator define is specified as a value of the
\c defines option in the \QC QDoc configuration file,
\c {\doc\qtcreator\config\qtcreator-project.qdocconf}.
It is mostly used in the \QC Manual sources to hide \QC
specific information when the \QDS Manual is built.
The \c {\else} command is sometimes used to replace some \QC specific text
with text that applies to \QDS. For example, the following \c if-else
statement is needed in the \QC Manual sources, because the project wizards
in \QDS are different from those in \QC, and are therefore described in
a new topic that is located in the \QDS Manual sources:
\badcode
For more information, see
\if defined(qtcreator)
\l{Creating Qt Quick Projects}.
\else
\l{Creating UI Prototype Projects}.
\endif
\endcode
\note Section titles in the two manuals can be identical only if the page is
excluded from the \QDS Manual. In this case, QDoc can correctly determine
the link target. If you add a link to a section title that appears twice in
the doc source files, QDoc uses the first reference to that title in the
\c {.index} file.
\section3 Writing About \QDS Specific Features
\QDS specific plugins and features are described in a set of doc
source files located in the \c {\doc\qtdesignstudio\src} directory. Some
files are used to include subsections in topics in the \QC Manual sources.
Screenshots and other illustrations are stored in the
\c {\qtdesignstudio\images} directory.
If you add new topics to the \QDS Manual, add links to them to the table
of contents in \c {qtdesignstudio-toc.qdoc} and check the values of the
navigation links around them.
\section3 Including Sections in \QC Manual Sources
\QMLD is an integral part of both \QC and \QDS. Therefore, most topics that
describe it are needed in the manuals of both tools. You can use the
\c {\include} command in the \QC Manual sources to include \c {.qdocinc}
files from the \QDS Manual sources when building the \QDS Manual.
For example, the following lines in the
\c {\doc\qtcreator\src\qtquick\qtquick-components.qdoc}
file add information about creating and using \QDS Components
to the \e {Creating Components} topic that is pulled from the
\QC Manual sources:
\badcode
\if defined(qtdesignstudio)
\include qtdesignstudio-components.qdocinc creating studio components
\include qtdesignstudio-components.qdocinc studio components
\endif
\endcode
Similarly, you can use include files to include subsections in different
main level topics in the two manuals.
\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.
The navigation order of the topics in the \QC Manual is specified in
\c {\doc\qtcreator\src\qtcreator-toc.qdoc} and that of the topics in the
\QDS Manual in \c {\doc\qtdesignstudio\src\qtdesignstudio-toc.qdoc}. If
you add topics to or move them around in a TOC file, you must adjust the
navigation links accordingly.
The \c qtdesignstudio define is specified as a value of
the \c defines option in the \QDS Manual configuration file,
\c {qtcreator\doc\qtdesignstudio\config\qtdesignstudio.qdocconf}.
It is mostly used in the \QC Manual sources to specify values for the
\c {\previouspage} and \c {\nextpage} commands depending on whether
the \QDS Manual or \QC Manual is being built. For example, the
following \c if-else statement is needed, because only the Git
version control system is integrated to \QDS, and information about
the other systems integrated to \QC is hidden:
\badcode
\page creator-vcs-git.html
\if defined(qtdesignstudio)
\previouspage studio-projects.html
\nextpage studio-importing-designs.html
\else
\previouspage creator-vcs-cvs.html
\nextpage creator-vcs-mercurial.html
\endif
\endcode
\section1 Adding Documentation for Independent Plugins
You can develop \QC plugins in separate repositories. Such plugins should
have their own help files (.qch) that are installed and registered only if
the plugin is installed.
The easiest way to set up the documentation project for an independent
plugin is to copy it from an existing repository, such as the
\l{https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/plugin-fossil-scm.git/}
{Fossil plugin}, and then make the necessary changes.
Use the following naming scheme for \QC plugin manuals:
\e {\QC <Plugin Name> Plugin Manual}. For example,
\e{\QC Fossil Plugin Manual}.
\section1 Writing Text
Follow the guidelines for
\l{http://wiki.qt.io/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.
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:
\badcode
\image riot.png
\endcode
\section2 Taking Screen Shots
\QC has the native look and feel on Windows, Linux, and \macos, and therefore,
screen shots can end up looking very different, depending on who takes them
and which system they use. To try to preserve a consistent look and feel in
the \QC Manual, observe the guidelines listed in this section when taking
screen shots.
\note Do not rely on screen shots present reasonable example values to
users, but always place example values also in the text.
\list
\li Use the screen resolution of 1366x768 (available on the most
commonly used screens, as of this writing).
\li Use the aspect ratio of 16:9.
\li Open the application in the maximum size on full screen.
\li Use your favorite tool to take the screen shot.
\li Include only the part of the screen that you need (you can crop the
image also in the screen capture tool).
\li To highlight parts of the screen shot, use the images of numbers
that are stored in \c{doc/images/numbers} in the \QC repository.
\li Before you submit the images to the repository, optimize them to
save space.
\endlist
\section2 Hightlighting Parts of the Screen
You can use number icons in screenshots to highlight parts of the screenshot
(instead of using red arrows or borders, or something similar). You can then
refer to the numbers in text. For and example, see the
\l{http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/topics-app-development.html}{Development Tools}
topic in the Qt reference documentation.
This improves the consistency of the look and feel of Qt documentation,
and eliminates the need to describe parts of the UI in the text, because
you can just insert the number of the element you are referring to in
brackets.
You can find a set of images that show the numbers from 1 to 10 in the
\c doc/images/numbers directory (or in the \c qtdoc module sources in
\c doc/images/numbers).
To use the numbers, copy-paste the number images on the screenshot to the
places that you want to refer to from text.
\section2 Optimizing 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 an image optimization tool.
Optimization should not visibly reduce image quality. If it does, do not do
it.
You can use a web service, such as \l{https://tinypng.com}, or an image
optimization tool to shrink the images. For example, you can use the Radical
Image Optimization Tool (RIOT) or OptiPNG on Windows, ImageOptim on
\macos, or some other tool available on Linux.
With ImageOptim, you simply drag and drop the image files to the
application. The following section describes the settings to use for RIOT.
\section3 Using RIOT
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
\li Color reduction: Optimal 256 colors palette
\li Reduce colors to: 256
\li Best compression (slow)
\li Color quantization algorithm: NeuQuant neural-net (slow)
\li 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 \uicontrol {True Color} option, instead).
You can also see the sizes of the initial and optimized image.
\section3 Using OptiPNG
Download and install \l{https://sourceforge.net/projects/optipng/}{OptiPNG}.
OptiPNG is a command-line tool that you can invoke from the \QC project
folder (or any folder that contains your project). To optimize a screenshot,
enter the following command (here, from the \QC project folder):
\badcode
optipng -o 7 -strip all doc/images/<screenshot_name>
\endcode
\section2 Linking to Youtube Videos
You can use the \c {\youtube} macro to link to a video on Youtube. The HTML
docs show a thumbnail of the video with a play button.
The support for the macro is defined in the
\c {qtcreator\doc\config\macros.qdocconf} file. To use the
macro, you need to save a thumbnail of the video in
\c {qtcreator\doc\qtcreator\images\videoicons} or
\c {qtcreator\doc\qtdesignstudio\images\videoicons}.
You can use the following URL to open the thumbnail image in a browser:
\c {https://img.youtube.com/vi/<ID>/0.jpg}. The \e {<ID>} is the ID of
the video on Youtube. For example, if the URL to the video is
\c {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ihYeC0YJ0M&feature=youtu.be},
the ID is \c 9ihYeC0YJ0M. Save the image file as \c {9ihYeC0YJ0M.jpg}.
You must add the filename of the thumbnail file to
\c {\qtcreator\doc\qtcreator\config\qtcreator-project.qdocconf} and
\c {\qtcreator\doc\qtdesignstudio\config\qtdesignstudio.qdocconf}
to the value of the \c {HTML.extraimages,qhp.qtcreator.extraFiles}
or \c {HTML.extraimages,qhp.qtdesignstudio.extraFiles} option.
If you'll only link to the video from the \QC Manual or the \QDS Manual,
you'll only need to add the thumbnail filename to the \c .qdocconf file
for that project.
For example, to enable linking to a video with the thumbnail filename
\c 9ihYeC0YJ0M.jpg in the \QDS Manual, the \c {qtdesignstudio.qdocconf}
file should contain the following entry:
\code
{HTML.extraimages,qhp.qtdesignstudio.extraFiles} += ../../config/images/commercial.png \
../images/videoicons/9ihYeC0YJ0M.jpg \
../images/videoicons/aV6kFxH3Xws.jpg \
../images/videoicons/ZzbucmQPU44.jpg
\endcode
To add a link to the video in text, you would write:
\code
\youtube 9ihYeC0YJ0M
\endcode
\note Leave out the filename extension when referring to the thumbnail.
\section1 Building Documentation
You use QDoc to build the documentation. Build the documentation before
submitting any documentation patches, to check its structure, contents,
and the validity of the QDoc commands. The error messages that QDoc
issues are generally very useful for troubleshooting.
\section2 Setting Up Documentation Builds
You can run \c qmake from an installed Qt to build documentation.
\note Since \QC version 4.12, only Qt 5.14.0 or later is supported
for building documentation.
For more information about setting up the build environment with a
self-built Qt if you do not want to build the whole Qt, see
\l{https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_Documentation}{Building Qt Documentation}
on the Qt wiki.
The content and formatting of documentation are separated in QDoc.
The documentation configuration, style sheets, and templates have
changed over time, so they differ between Qt and \QC versions.
The templates to use are defined by the
\c {qt5/qtbase/doc/global/qt-html-templates-offline.qdocconf}
and \c {qt5/qtbase/doc/global/qt-html-templates-online.qdocconf}
configuration file. They are fetched from Qt sources by adding
the following lines to the qdocconf file:
\list
\li \c {include ($QT_INSTALL_DOCS/global/qt-html-templates-offline.qdocconf)}
for help files
\li \c {include ($QT_INSTALL_DOCS/global/qt-html-templates-online.qdocconf)}
for publishing on the web
\endlist
\note To have the correct fonts loaded for the online version, you must be
running it on a web server.
\note If the styles look wrong to you when reading help files in \QC or \QA,
you might be looking at them in the QTextBrowser instead of the Qt WebEngine
browser. This happens if you do not have Qt WebEngine installed.
\section2 Documentation Build Commands
To build documentation for the sources from the qtcreator master branch, use
build scripts defined in the doc.pri file. To build the docs in the
HTML format and to create help files (.qch), enter the following build
commands from the project folder (after running qmake):
\list
\li \c {nmake docs} (on Windows)
\li \c {make docs} (on Linux and \macos)
\endlist
The HTML documentation is generated in the following folders:
\list
\li \c doc/html/qtcreator
\li \c doc/html/qtcreatordev
\li \c doc/html/qtdesignstudio
\endlist
The help files (\c {.qch}) are generated in the
\c {share/doc/qtcreator} directory in the \QC build directory on Windows and
Linux, and in the \c {bin/Qt Creator.app/Contents/Resources/app} directory
on \macos.
You can view the HTML files in a browser and the help files in
the \QC \uicontrol Help mode. For more information about adding the help
files to \QC, see
\l{http://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-help.html#adding-external-documentation}
{Adding External Documentation}.
Besides \c docs, you have the following options for building a particular
document in a particular format:
\list
\li \c html_docs_qtcreator - build \QC Manual in help format, but do not
generate a help file
\li \c html_docs_qtcreator-dev - build Extending \QC Manual in help
format, but do not generate a help file
\li \c qch_docs_qtcreator - build \QC Manual in help format and generate
a help file (.qch)
\li \c qch_docs_qtcreator-dev - build Extending \QC Manual in help format
and generate a help file (.qch)
\endlist
\section3 Building the \QDS Manual
To get the correct product name and version, you must run \c {qmake -r} on
\c {qtcreator.pro} with the \c IDE_BRANDING_PRI option set to the absolute
path of \c {ide_branding.pri} in the \QDS (private) repository.
For example, on Windows enter (all on one line):
\badcode
C:\dev\qtc-super\qtcreator>..\..\..\Qt\5.14.1\msvc2017_64\bin\qmake.exe
qtcreator.pro -r
IDE_BRANDING_PRI=C:\dev\tqtc-plugin-qtquickdesigner\studiodata\branding\ide_branding.pri
\endcode
To build the \QDS Manual:
\list 1
\li Run \c qmake from Qt 5.14.0, or later with the path to the branding
information as an option (all on one line):
\c {<relative_path_to>/qmake.exe
qtcreator.pro -r
IDE_BRANDING_PRI=<absolute_path_to>ide_branding.pri}
\li Run \c {make docs} on Linux and macOS or \c {nmake docs}
on Windows.
\endlist
*/
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