@Thomas-Stein said in Citing QT Docs:
Im a bit confused about who wrote the docs.
This is a bit tricky.
Often (but not always), the person who wrote the code also wrote the original documentation. However, other people could come along at a later time to improve the documentation
Im looking at the sourcecode of qimage.cpp. If I scroll down I can see the docs, but there is nothing about an author being mentioned, just the copyright header at the top for "The Qt Company Ltd."
Documentation and source code are often written in the same file.
Usually, copyright in the file is listed against the "main" contributor to that file. However, if a "secondary" contributor puts enough substantial work into a file, they might add their own name to the copyright list (e.g. https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/src/corelib/thread/qreadwritelock_p.h )
Unfortunately, there is no hard-and-fast rule on this. A major contributor might decide not to (or forget to) list themselves as a copyright holder.
Am I safe to cite just "The Qt Company Ltd. " here as the author?
I think so. However, if you can clearly identify an individual who wrote the section that you're citing (e.g. by using git blame), citing them directly might be better.
I suggest talking to your supervisor to see if your university has guidelines on citing works that received input from a wide range of community members. (The answer to "How do I cite a page in the Qt documentation?" might be similar to the answer to "How do I cite a Wikipedia article?")
