\chapter What is Qt Script for Applications

This chapter gives a brief overview of the \QSA toolkit.  

\section1 Components of \QSA

\QSA is a cross-platform toolkit for making C++ applications scriptable
using an interpreted scripting language, \QS. The \QSA toolkit is made up
of the following components:

\list

\i

\QSA library, which the developer of the C++ application uses to make
the application scriptable.

\i

\QS, an easy-to-learn, cross-platform interpreted scripting
language. \QS is based on the ECMAScript standard. Microsoft's
JScript, and Netscape's JavaScript are also based on the ECMAScript
standard.

\i 

\QSAD (Qt Script for Applications Workbench), a scripting environment for editing, managing, and
running scripts within your project. \QSAD includes an output
window to view errors that occur when running the script. 

\omit

\i

\QSAD is the cross-platform IDE used by the end-user to create scripts
for C++ applications. \QSAD is based on Trolltech's highly successful
visual form builder for C++, \e{Qt Designer}. \QSAD provides a
complete development environment, including an integrated debugger, in
which end-users can write, run, save and debug scripts.

\endomit

\i

\QSA makes certain objects (QObject and its subclasses) available
to the scripting engine. The only thing you have to do to make your
application scriptable, is to pass these objects to a function of the
\QSA library. No binding code is needed because it is done dynamically using
Qt meta object system.

\endlist

The tutorial chapters that follow show you how to make an application
scriptable and how to write a simple script for the application. 



