[Qt-creator] Question about "kate/ktexteditor" highlighting implementation in QtCreator

[Eike Ziller]

> On 13. Aug 2018, at 00:21, Dr.-Ing. Christoph Cullmann <cullmann at absint.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> at the moment, the KTextEditor team ports away from its old syntax highlighting
> engine (which was reimplemented some years ago in QtCreator) to the new
> KSyntaxHighlighting framework (a Qt only KF5 framework).
> 
> https://api.kde.org/frameworks/syntax-highlighting/html/index.html
> https://cgit.kde.org/syntax-highlighting.git/about/
> 
> After this is done, we will do some incompatible changes to the xml files (that
> are reused by QtCreator at the moment).
> 
> I know that in the past there was no chance to reuse the KTextEditor/Kate implementation
> due to licensing/dependencies issues.
> 
> Would it be possible to reuse the framework above to stay compatible and share code/maintenance
> effort?

That would be desirable goal :)

> At the moment the framework is LGPLv2+, but even relicensing to something
> more liberal is at the moment still possible, if that would allow better collaboration.

Thanks for contacting us on that question! I’ve added Lars as our Chief Maintainer to CC.

Our 3rd-party license policy is documented here:
https://quips-qt-io.herokuapp.com/quip-0004.html#acceptable-licenses

It boils down to:
* MIT or BSD or anything that is basically the same is no problem to include for us
* L(GPL) might be ok in some cases, but usually not for “core” parts

(That last part about “core” parts is written in the policy with the Qt hat on as “part of Qt Essentials", but for Qt Creator I’d interpret that in a similar manner.)

I’d say that the generic text highlighting is a “core” part in Qt Creator, so it would be good if a 3rd-party library for that would be MIT/BSD-style, otherwise we probably cannot use it.

Best regards, Eike


> Greetings
> Christoph
> 
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-- 
Eike Ziller
Principal Software Engineer

The Qt Company GmbH
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