What's wonderful about the Graphics View framework is that everyone wants to do everything with it. That's what I call a true success indicator. It's so easy to learn, and very inspiring to use, and Qt developers can only see more and more possibilities. That's when you know the API is a success. Now, that some parts of the API don't behave exactly like you would want, I can only see that as natural. Actually I see that as a good thing. It's a sign that you're working with the framework, instead of fighting it.

Now, the trick is to find out how to extend the API, without bloating it. We knew in advance that the text item would be a target of endless customization requests, and we are just extending it as we go along. QTextControl might be made public at one point, but as it is today, it probably can't do half of what you'd expect it to do... But then again, we need to see exactly what it is you want to do (as you wrote just now). Hover event behavior: you will probably notice that parents and children propagate hover events, whereas siblings do not. That's by design, and works for most cases, but not all. Maybe we can do something to help you out, if this doesn't fit your application well.

The best approach is to file a suggestion, or report an inconvenience in the API, by posting to http://www.trolltech.com/bugreport-form. With a proper line of argumentation, I'm sure you'll see that APIs will evolve in your direction.