[Development] "Getting started" tutorials (Was: Examples and Demos in qtdoc)

[Sze Howe Koh]

On 15 June 2017 at 01:29, Tuukka Turunen <tuukka.turunen at qt.io> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Yes, we would like to overall improve the examples. This is related to
having a new repo for examples, but not fully the same thing. Main goal in
example improvement being to make them more useful in what they are:
examples of how to use Qt. Currently there are some examples that implement
their own rudimentary controls instead of using Qt Quick Controls 2. We
also have some examples that do not properly leverage our tooling. Some
examples might not show the very best way to do things, as the new APIs
allow even better way than at the time of creating the example.
>
> What comes to WOW, we do need to have great looking demos and at least
some examples should look good as well. However, that WOW should not be the
ultimate goal. The purpose of examples is to help users make better use of
Qt and sometimes making things too shiny can be counterproductive. Another
thing is that this WOW is a quite subjective matter and different trends
come and go. It is fine to make an example look great, but that should not
be the sole purpose.
>
> Yours,
>
> Tuukka

Understood.

On the topic of showing users "how to use Qt" and "leverage our tooling", I
feel that our "getting started" tutorials/examples need some love too.

IMHO, the "Getting Started" tutorial from Qt 4.3 (
https://doc.qt.io/archives/4.3/tutorial-t1.html) is more accessible to
beginners than http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/gettingstartedqt.html mainly because
the Qt 4.3 tute presents material in digestible chunks. Readers are
introduced to the bare bones, and get to compile and interact with their
code very early on. Then, the tute gradually introduces more and more
concepts across a number of chapters; each chapter builds upon the
previous. The reader gets to build and try out the new concepts in each
chapter, before moving on to the next.

In contrast, the Qt 5 tutorial takes the reader through a multitude of
concepts (Qt Designer, the UIC file format, the *.pro file, subclassing
widgets, the Q_OBJECT macro, properties, signals and slots, layouts, and
many different classes) before the reader is taught how to compile and run
their first app. If the reader made a mistake somewhere along the way, it's
hard to find out where. There is far too much material packed into a single
"getting started" article.

I'm thinking of spending some time to update the Qt 4.3 tutorial (chapters
1 - 7) for Qt 5, presented in a few different ways to show how to do the
same thing using different Qt technologies:

1. C++ only
2. C++ with Qt Designer
3. QML only
4. QML with Qt Quick Designer

Is this something you'd want in the official documentation?


Regards,
Sze-Howe
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