New blog series - developing a new QML app

Behind the screen - development of a QML application

Usually we do not get to talk about the innovative solutions our employees find to almost impossible problems on a daily basis - I guess that is just part of life as a consulting company. Recently we developed an in-house application, and that gives us the opportunity to brag a bit about cool technical solutions.

It all started half a year ago, when our training director set out on a mission: Develop a new presentation program in QML, with slides written in QML too.

In his own words, this was a crazy idea to say the least, but the result is a great foundation for future development in our presentations. As an example, slides may now contain a QML animation showing what is being described, rather than just a steady image, and from here on, only the sky is the limit.

In our new blog post series, we go behind the screen to discuss some of the technical challenges that we faced when implementing this application in QML. Even if you never plan on joining one of our trainings, there ought to be many interesting solutions for you to get inspired by.

Currently five blog post have been lined up to come out over the next few months:

1. Jesper Pedersen, our training director, introduces the whole application and discusses why he thought it was a worthwhile idea to pursue. 
2. The second blog post will tell how we managed to get a cloned view of the QML scene (needed for the projected view versus the presenter’s view). 
3. How we integrated an HTML syntax highlighter with the C++ part of the application, to highlight the code segments in the presentations.
4. The implication of going from a pure QML (with a C++ backend) application to an application using Qt Quick Controls.
5. The fifth (and currently final) blog post will discuss the first major roadblock we hit, namely how to make a hardcopy of the training material. QML as such does not have any printing facilities. Our initial attempt was to just make a screenshot of each slide, but with 1800 pages in a slide deck, the resulting PDF file approached half a gigabyte. Fortunately we found an excellent solution!

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