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-/****************************************************************************
-**
-** Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).
-** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com)
-**
-** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit.
-**
-** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$
-** No Commercial Usage
-** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed.
-** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions
-** contained in the either Technology Preview License Agreement or the
-** Beta Release License Agreement.
-**
-** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage
-** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser
-** General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software
-** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the
-** packaging of this file. Please review the following information to
-** ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements
-** will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html.
-**
-** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain
-** additional rights. These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL
-** Exception version 1.0, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this
-** package.
-**
-** GNU General Public License Usage
-** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU
-** General Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software
-** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the
-** packaging of this file. Please review the following information to
-** ensure the GNU General Public License version 3.0 requirements will be
-** met: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
-**
-** If you are unsure which license is appropriate for your use, please
-** contact the sales department at http://qt.nokia.com/contact.
-** $QT_END_LICENSE$
-**
-****************************************************************************/
-
-/*!
- \page qt4-scribe.html
- \title The Scribe Classes
-
- \contentspage {What's New in Qt 4}{Home}
- \previouspage The Arthur Paint System
- \nextpage The Qt 4 Main Window Classes
-
- \keyword Scribe
-
- Scribe introduces a set of text layout classes to Qt 4. These classes
- replace the old rich text engine found in Qt 3, and provide new features
- for processing and laying out both plain and rich text.
-
- \tableofcontents
-
- For more details about how to use the Scribe classes, see the
- \l{richtext.html}{Rich Text Processing} document.
-
- \section1 Overview of Scribe
-
- Support for text rendering and layout in Qt 4 has been redesigned
- around a system that allows textual content to be represented in a more
- flexible way than was possible with Qt 3. Qt 4 also provides a more
- convenient programming interface for editing documents. These
- improvements are made available through a reimplementation of the
- existing text rendering engine, and the introduction of several new
- classes.
-
- The following sections provide a brief overview of the main concepts
- behind Scribe.
-
- \section2 The Document Interface
-
- Text documents are represented by the QTextDocument class, rather
- than by QString objects. Each QTextDocument object contains
- information about the document's internal representation, its
- structure, and keeps track of modifications to provide undo/redo
- facilities.
- This approach allows features such as layout management to be
- delegated to specialized classes, but also provides a focus for the
- framework.
-
- Documents are either converted from external sources or created from
- scratch using Qt. The creation process can done by an editor widget,
- such as QTextEdit, or by explicit calls to the Scribe API.
-
- Text documents can be accessed in two complementary ways: as a linear
- buffer for editors to use, and as an object hierarchy that is useful to
- layout engines.
- In the hierarchical document model, objects generally correspond to
- visual elements such as frames, tables, and lists. At a lower level,
- these elements describe properties such as the text style and alignment.
- The linear representation of the document is used for editing and
- manipulation of the document's contents.
-
- \section2 Document Structure
-
- Each document contains a root frame into which all other structural
- elements are placed. This frame contains other structural elements,
- including tables, text blocks, and other frames; these can be nested to
- an arbitrary depth.
-
- Frames provide logical separation between parts of the document, but
- also have properties that determine how they will appear when rendered.
- A table is a specialized type of frame that consists of a number of
- cells, arranged into rows and columns, each of which can contain
- further structure and text. Tables provide management and layout
- features that allow flexible configurations of cells to be created.
-
- Text blocks contain text fragments, each of which specifies text and
- character format information. Textual properties are defined both at
- the character level and at the block level. At the character level,
- properties such as font family, text color, and font weight can be
- specified. The block level properties control the higher level
- appearance and behavior of the text, such as the direction of text
- flow, alignment, and background color.
-
- The document structure is not manipulated directly. Editing is
- performed through a cursor-based interface.
-
- \section2 Editing and Content Creation
-
- Documents can be edited via the interface provided by the QTextCursor
- class; cursors are either created using a constructor or obtained from
- an editor widget. The cursor is used to perform editing operations that
- correspond exactly to those the user is able to make themselves in an
- editor. As a result, information about the document structure is also
- available through the cursor, and this allows the structure to be
- modified. The use of a cursor-oriented interface for editing makes the
- process of writing a custom editor simpler for developers, since the
- editing operations can be easily visualized.
-
- The QTextCursor class also maintains information about any text it
- has selected in the document, again following a model that is
- conceptually similar to the actions made by the user to select text
- in an editor.
-
- \section2 Document Layout
-
- The layout of a document is only relevant when it is to be displayed on
- a device, or when some information is requested that requires a visual
- representation of the document. Until this occurs, the document does
- not need to be formatted and prepared for a device.
-
- Each document's layout is managed by a subclass of the
- QAbstractTextDocumentLayout class. This class provides a common
- interface for layout and rendering engines. The default rendering
- behavior is currently implemented in a private class. This approach
- makes it possible to create custom layouts, and provides the
- mechanism used when preparing pages for printing or exporting to
- Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
-
- \section1 Example Code
-
- Here we present two different ways in which the Scribe classes can be
- used: for creating and manipulating rich text, and for laying out
- plain text.
-
-
- \section2 Manipulating Rich Text
-
- Rich text is stored in text documents that can either be created by
- importing HTML from an external source, or generated using a
- QTextCursor. The easiest way to use a rich text document is through
- the QTextEdit class, providing an editable view onto a document. The code
- below imports HTML into a document, and displays the document using a
- text edit widget.
-
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/scribe-overview/main.cpp 1
-
- You can retrieve the document from the text edit using the
- document() function. The document can then be edited programmatically
- using the QTextCursor class. This class is modeled after a screen
- cursor, and editing operations follow the same semantics. The following
- code changes the first line of the document to a bold font, leaving all
- other font properties untouched. The editor will be automatically
- updated to reflect the changes made to the underlying document data.
-
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/scribe-overview/main.cpp 0
-
- Note that the cursor was moved from the start of the first line to the
- end, but that it retained an anchor at the start of the line. This
- demonstrates the cursor-based selection facilities of the
- QTextCursor class.
-
- Rich text can be generated very quickly using the cursor-based
- approach. The following example shows a simple calendar in a
- QTextEdit widget with bold headers for the days of the week:
-
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/textdocument-blocks/mainwindow.cpp 0
- \codeline
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/textdocument-blocks/mainwindow.cpp 1
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/textdocument-blocks/mainwindow.cpp 2
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/textdocument-blocks/mainwindow.cpp 3
-
- The above example demonstrates how simple it is to quickly generate new
- rich text documents using a minimum amount of code. Although we have
- generated a crude fixed-pitch calendar to avoid quoting too much code,
- Scribe provides much more sophisticated layout and formatting features.
-
- \section2 Plain Text Layout
-
- Sometimes it is important to be able to format plain text within an
- irregularly-shaped region, perhaps when rendering a custom widget, for
- example. Scribe provides generic features, such as those provided by
- the QTextLayout class, to help developers perform word-wrapping and
- layout tasks without the need to create a document first.
-
- \img plaintext-layout.png
-
- Formatting and drawing a paragraph of plain text is straightforward.
- The example below will lay out a paragraph of text, using a single
- font, around the right hand edge of a circle.
-
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/plaintextlayout/window.cpp 0
-
- We create a text layout, specifying the text string we want to display
- and the font to use. We ensure that the text we supplied is formatted
- correctly by obtaining text lines from the text format, and wrapping
- the remaining text using the available space. The lines are positioned
- as we move down the page.
-
- The formatted text can be drawn onto a paint device; in the above code,
- the text is drawn directly onto a widget.
-
- \section2 Printing Features
-
- The layout system used to display rich text documents also supports
- paged layout of documents, and this is used by Qt to generate output for
- printing. The printing process is performed by QPrinter and controlled by
- the user via options displayed in a QPrintDialog:
-
- \snippet doc/src/snippets/textdocument-printing/mainwindow.cpp 0
-
- Rich text documents can also be exported as PDF files using QPrinter and
- the appropriate print engine:
-
- \snippet demos/textedit/textedit.cpp 0
-
- \section1 Comparison with Qt 3
-
- The cursor-based editing features, combined with the structural document
- model, provide a powerful set of tools for manipulating and displaying
- rich text documents. These provide features that were unavailable in
- Qt 3's public API. The engine used is a complete rewrite and does not
- use the rich text engine supplied with Qt 3.
-
- The QTextEdit class in Qt 4 has also been completely rewritten with an
- API that is quite different from its Qt 3 counterpart. Some compatibility
- methods have been added to allow the widget to be used, for basic cases,
- in a way that is familiar to users of Qt 3. This class is provided as a
- working example of an editor widget that uses the new API, showing that
- it is possible to completely implement a document editor based on the
- QTextCursor editing interface.
-*/