[Development] Assistant WebKit/WebEngine support

[Giuseppe D'Angelo]

Il 25/06/19 16:30, Palaraja, Kavindra ha scritto:
> The idea is to have parity in the sense of 1:1 appearance of how the documentation looks like.
> 
> Here's a ticket that hasn't gone very far:
> 
> https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTCREATORBUG-15887
> 
> Can we keep the personal attacks out of this and perhaps stick to the issue? I'm definitely not lying. I don't see any tables being rendered the way tables should be rendered in HTML. Unless I'm losing my eyesight?
> 
> You could check:https://doc.qt.io/QtApplicationManager/manifest.html  none of that alternating row color or design shows up. As a Technical Writer, I expect the output to look like that. So why doesn't it? I'm not attached to WebEngine, I just want to get the expected output.

Because the Qt text document classes (*) don't support that kind of styling:

> https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/richtext-html-subset.html

They *do* support tables, and I'll grant, they look horrible. And they 
do support background colours for table cells, meaning that a table with 
alternating row colours could in principle be produced, albeit not by 
using fancy CSS nth-odd/even selectors.

(By the way, I have no idea how the Assistant docs are currently 
generated and styled.)



Anyhow, let me raise some further questions:

* Is the whole idea of moving to a web browser driven exclusively by 
these missing features in terms of styling / HTML / JS support, that 
prevent more unification between content offered on the web vs. the one 
integrated in QtHelp?

** Have such missing features been identified, in the first place? At 
least the ones we care about w.r.t. Qt's own help.

** Have feature requests been filed against QTextDocument? Have their 
costs then been estimated? (Again, in the principle of EYODF)

** Have workarounds been discussed?

** Was it simply deemed not worth doing such work when we have another 
working solution, "easy" to reach, and that will survive any 
redesign/restyling of the docs that is going to happen every now and then?


* Is the whole idea part of a bigger plan of further improving QtHelp, 
e.g. make it possible to load external resources through it such as 
videos, community forums, PDFs, you name it? Basically, out of reach for 
any effort at possibly improving QTD.



The thing is, the arguments _against_ this move are many. If you combine 
them with the ordinary human behaviour where "fear of change" trumps 
"perceived benefits" every single time, you'll get a very agitated audience.


(*) you're officially a Qt old-school if you remember the codename for them.

-- 
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts

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