QPlainTextEdit and anchors

[bear101]

Hi

I'm using a QPlainTextEdit for text chat and would like to highlight URLs. I do this by subclassing QSyntaxHighlighter and call setFormat() like this:

class UrlSyntaxHighlighter : public QSyntaxHighlighter
...
    void highlightBlock(const QString& text)
    {
        QString pattern = "(http://[^ ]+)";
        QRegExp expression(pattern);
        int index = text.indexOf(expression);
        while (index >= 0) {
            int length = expression.matchedLength();
            QTextCharFormat myClassFormat = format(index);
            myClassFormat.setFontUnderline(true);
            myClassFormat.setForeground(Qt::blue);
            myClassFormat.setAnchor(true);
            myClassFormat.setAnchorHref(expression.cap(1));
            myClassFormat.setAnchorName(expression.cap(1));
            setFormat(index, length, myClassFormat);
            index = text.indexOf(expression, index + length);
        }
    }

class UrlSyntaxHighlighter : public QSyntaxHighlighter
...
    void highlightBlock(const QString& text)
    {
        QString pattern = "(http://[^ ]+)";
        QRegExp expression(pattern);
        int index = text.indexOf(expression);
        while (index >= 0) {
            int length = expression.matchedLength();
            QTextCharFormat myClassFormat = format(index);
            myClassFormat.setFontUnderline(true);
            myClassFormat.setForeground(Qt::blue);
            myClassFormat.setAnchor(true);
            myClassFormat.setAnchorHref(expression.cap(1));
            myClassFormat.setAnchorName(expression.cap(1));
            setFormat(index, length, myClassFormat);
            index = text.indexOf(expression, index + length);
        }
    }

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In my QPlainTextEdit I'm then overriding mouseMoveEvent(.) to change the mouse cursor when the anchor is hovered. However, when I access the QTextCursor using QPlainTextEdit::cursorForPosition(.) and extract the QTextCharFormat there is no anchor set on the text. Anyone know why?

Btw, I know I can use QTextEdit instead which has better support for anchors but I try and keep memory low and I don't need all the fancy picture-stuff. Also I'm aware that the regex isn't entirely correct.

-- Bjoern