QtCreator help system suggestion

[nothingbutqt]

Hi all,

On a rainy Monday morning when you have to comment your code...
Right so, how about QtCreator's "F1" action wouldn't only work on existing indexed help packages, but also on the loaded projects' (at least the active one) dynamically changing context?
I mean help packages generated by doxygen and then converted, blessed, configured, applied is just a headache. And the source is parsed for several other reasons anyway, so I guess this would be feasible at some point.

Cheers

[lyuts]

What if you work on project that uses another project's API and you need to see that API's documentation? You would have to assign relations with other projects by hand, I assume.

[nothingbutqt]

I think the other project should be loaded at least, then relations can be figured when parsing that project as relations are parsed anyway for browsing the code. And when you have such feature you'll figure how is it best developed further, how is it more useful.

[lyuts]

I think it would be a very expensive parsing which will parse the source code + parse doxygen docs + analyze the the dependency on other projects previously registered + parse the doxygen docs of projects dependencies.

[nothingbutqt]

Right, but what if the help system would be able to display other stuff than the existing help packages?
I mean when you browse the code a "Ctrl-click" jumps to the referenced location, would it be too
difficult for an "F1" to check the same location for comments and quickly generate documentation on-demand?

[lyuts]

[quote author="nothingbutqt" date="1286875144"]would it be too
difficult for an "F1" to check the same location for comments and quickly generate documentation on-demand?
[/quote]

"Too quickly" is an ideal case. The delay after might be very long so that user can get nervous and furious because of waiting while doc generation is complete. What if the size of a project is very big? Or there are several big projects to parse?

[nothingbutqt]

[quote author="lyuts" date="1286875465"]"Too quickly" is an ideal case. The delay after might be very long so that user can get nervous and furious because of waiting while doc generation is complete. What if the size of a project is very big? Or there are several big projects to parse?[/quote]

Ok, but full parsing is not needed. If you already know the referenced location then a single page documentation can be quickly generated. Yes, I understand there might be lots of links from that single page that require further parsing, but in the beginning it could be dropped. Or those links could be some special links that would do the same on-demand help generation.
I know it's not something easy/quick to develop, but still would be a very nice feature. Just don't throw away the idea.

[lyuts]

Don't get me wrong, I agree that this feature is very nice too and agree that is not so easy/quick to develop. I assume this feature may end up in tons of requirements and tons of user settings. Actually I think you may consider doing the initial implementation of this feature and then contributing it to Qt Creator.

[nothingbutqt]

[quote author="lyuts" date="1286876338"]Actually I think you may consider doing the initial implementation of this feature and then contributing it to Qt Creator.[/quote]
I'll think about it. Haven't seen Creator's source yet though, but it's time.

[lyuts]

I think if you face any problems, then there will be a lot of people here willing to help you.

[tobias.hunger]

nothingbutqt: Feel free to stop by in #qt-creator on the "freenode IRC network":http://freenode.net/ if you have questions.

Of course you can also to ask on the "qt-creator mailing list":http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator.