Rich Text Processing

An overview of Qt’s rich text processing, editing and display features.

The Scribe framework provides a set of classes for reading and manipulating structured rich text documents. Unlike previous rich text support in Qt, the new classes are centered around the QTextDocument class rather than raw textual information. This enables the developer to create and modify structured rich text documents without having to prepare content in an intermediate markup format.

The information within a document can be accessed via two complementary interfaces: A cursor-based interface is used for editing, and a read-only hierarchical interface provides a high level overview of the document structure. The main advantage of the cursor-based interface is that the text can be edited using operations that mimic a user’s interaction with an editor, without losing the underlying structure of the document. The read-only hierarchical interface is most useful when performing operations such as searching and document export.

This document is divided up into chapters for convenient reference:

Rich Text Processing APIs

Qt provides an extensive collection of classes for parsing, rendering manipulating and editing rich text.

PySide6.QtGui.QAbstractTextDocumentLayout

The QAbstractTextDocumentLayout class is an abstract base class used to implement custom layouts for QTextDocuments.

PySide6.QtGui.QFont

The QFont class specifies a query for a font used for drawing text.

PySide6.QtGui.QSyntaxHighlighter

The QSyntaxHighlighter class allows you to define syntax highlighting rules, and in addition you can use the class to query a document’s current formatting or user data.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextCursor

The QTextCursor class offers an API to access and modify QTextDocuments.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextDocument

The QTextDocument class holds formatted text.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextDocumentFragment

The QTextDocumentFragment class represents a piece of formatted text from a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextDocumentWriter

The QTextDocumentWriter class provides a format-independent interface for writing a QTextDocument to files or other devices.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextLength

The QTextLength class encapsulates the different types of length used in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextFormat

The QTextFormat class provides formatting information for a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextCharFormat

The QTextCharFormat class provides formatting information for characters in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextBlockFormat

The QTextBlockFormat class provides formatting information for blocks of text in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextListFormat

The QTextListFormat class provides formatting information for lists in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextFrameFormat

The QTextFrameFormat class provides formatting information for frames in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextTableFormat

The QTextTableFormat class provides formatting information for tables in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextImageFormat

The QTextImageFormat class provides formatting information for images in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextTableCellFormat

The QTextTableCellFormat class provides formatting information for table cells in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextInlineObject

The QTextInlineObject class represents an inline object in a QAbstractTextDocumentLayout and its implementations.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextLayout

The QTextLayout class is used to lay out and render text.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextLine

The QTextLine class represents a line of text inside a QTextLayout.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextList

The QTextList class provides a decorated list of items in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextObject

The QTextObject class is a base class for different kinds of objects that can group parts of a QTextDocument together.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextBlockGroup

The QTextBlockGroup class provides a container for text blocks within a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextFrame

The QTextFrame class represents a frame in a QTextDocument.

QTextFrame.iterator

The iterator class provides an iterator for reading the contents of a QTextFrame.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextBlockUserData

The QTextBlockUserData class is used to associate custom data with blocks of text.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextBlock

The QTextBlock class provides a container for text fragments in a QTextDocument.

QTextBlock.iterator

The QTextBlock::iterator class provides an iterator for reading the contents of a QTextBlock.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextFragment

The QTextFragment class holds a piece of text in a QTextDocument with a single QTextCharFormat.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextOption

The QTextOption class provides a description of general rich text properties.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextTableCell

The QTextTableCell class represents the properties of a cell in a QTextTable.

PySide6.QtGui.QTextTable

The QTextTable class represents a table in a QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtWidgets.QPlainTextDocumentLayout

The QPlainTextDocumentLayout class implements a plain text layout for QTextDocument.

PySide6.QtWidgets.QPlainTextEdit

The QPlainTextEdit class provides a widget that is used to edit and display plain text.

PySide6.QtWidgets.QTextBrowser

The QTextBrowser class provides a rich text browser with hypertext navigation.

PySide6.QtWidgets.QTextEdit

The QTextEdit class provides a widget that is used to edit and display both plain and rich text.