When you open a GCF project in Qt Creator, you will notice that the project tree on the left hand side also shows GUIXML files against each component and the global ComponentLoaderComponent.xml (CLC for short) file. The CLC file describes the order of loading of components. Each component’s GUIXML file describes the GUI of the component.

When you double click on any of the GUIXML files, you will get a fancy XML editor that color codes the whole file. Known elements and attributes are marked in bold face; while unknown ones are color coded but in italics. The custom XML editor works only for GCF’s GUIXML files, Qt Creator will default to a simple QPlainTextEdit for other kinds of XML files. We have also implemented find support for the GUIXML editor; that way users can just hit “Ctrl+F” and search for text using the familiar “find text bar” along the bottom edge of the window.

[ Chapter 5 of the document on Writing Qt Creator Plugins was very useful for implementing this feature. Thanks to my colleague Vasudha for researching on this one]