Qt5DocumentationProject

The Qt 5 Documentation Renewal Project

We are working on restructuring and renewing and fixing the Qt Reference Documentation for the Qt 5 release. This consists of several parts:

• API documentation: C++ API, QML API, and JavaScript related functions
• Examples and example documentation: shows how the API are used
• Overviews: explains the architecture and features of Qt

Changes from Qt 4 to Qt 5

Here is a brief summary of the important changes in the Qt 5 documentation:

• QDoc’s binary is now qdoc whereas in Qt 4, the binary is called qdoc3
• The documentation is modularized. This means that the documentation for each module resides in their respective source directories. The directory doc/src is no longer used to contain overviews and API documentation
• The Qt modules will have their own pages and they may be treated as separate projects with different release schedules.

Important Resources

These are important resources for contributing to or working with the documentation.

• Adding Documentation to a New Module
• Qt Documentation Wiki – the main Documentation wiki which contains style information and contribution details
• QDoc Manual [doc-snapshot.qt.io] – contains a guide to QDoc as well as information about C++ and QML commands
• Documentation Structure page contains a map of how the directory structure of a repository or module should be
• Building Qt Documentation – outlines how to build the documentation for Qt 5 and for each module
• Qt Writing Guidelines
• http://doc-snapshot.qt.io/ [doc-snapshot.qt.io] – the documentation snapshot

API Documentation in Qt 5

Essentially, each module needs:

• landing page (using the \page command) see specifications
• example page
• c++ class list (using the \module command)
• qml type list (\qmlmodule command)

To get started, the QDoc Guide [doc-snapshot.qt.io] explains how QDoc generates documentation from QDoc comments.

Overview Documentation

Overviews describe a functionality, a group of APIs, and the technology in Qt. These overviews help developers decide which feature or API suits them best and helps them understand how the API cooperate within Qt and their applications.

For Qt 5, many of the overviews are being edited and rewritten for correctness and relevancy.

Example documentation

Examples have two components:

• code – must compile and be delivered to the SDK. The .pro files must exist and SDK users must be able to compile them
• documentation – the documentation walks through the example code. This page is created by QDoc’s \example topic command

A brief list of the tasks:

• Triage and sort the examples * – current status: Example List [community.kde.org]
• Fix the example code – the examples must be modularized and follow the documentation structure.
• Create the documentation page – the examples must be documented and walk through the example code. The Writing Qt Examples page contains information about proper style.