QAssistantClient Class Reference

Detailed Description

The QAssistantClient class provides a means of using Qt Assistant as an application's help tool.

Note: This class is obsolete and only required when using the old Qt Assistant, now called assistant_adp. If you want to use the new Qt Assistant as a remote help viewer, simple create a QProcess instance and specify assistant as its executable. The following code shows how to start Qt Assistant and request a certain page to be shown:

         QProcess *process = new QProcess(this);
         QString app = QLibraryInfo::location(QLibraryInfo::BinariesPath)
             + QLatin1String("/assistant");

         process->start(app, QStringList() << QLatin1String("-enableRemoteControl"));
         if (!process->waitForStarted()) {
             QMessageBox::critical(this, tr("Remote Control"),
                 tr("Could not start Qt Assistant from %1.").arg(app));
             return;
         }

         // show index page
         QTextStream str(process);
         str << QLatin1String("SetSource qthelp://mycompany.com/doc/index.html")
             << QLatin1Char('\0') << endl;
     }

For a complete example using the Qt Assistant remotely, see the Remote Control example.

In order to make Qt Assistant act as a customized help tool for your application, you must provide your application with a QAssistantClient object in addition to a Qt Assistant Document Profile (.adp file) and the associated documentation.

Note that the QAssistantClient class is not included in the Qt library. To use it you must add the following line to your pro file:

         CONFIG += assistant

A QAssistantClient instance can open or close Qt Assistant whenever it is required.

Once you have created a QAssistantClient instance, specifying the path to the Qt Assistant executable, using Qt Assistant is simple: You can either call the openAssistant() slot to show the defined start page of the documentation, or you can call the showPage() slot to show a particular help page. When you call openAssistant() and showPage(), Qt Assistant will be launched if it isn't already running. When Qt Assistant is running, the isOpen() function returns true.

When calling showPage() the Qt Assistant instance will also be brought to the foreground if its hidden. The showPage() slot can be called multiple times, while calling openAssistant() several times without closing the application in between, will have no effect.

You can close Qt Assistant at any time using the closeAssistant() slot. When you call openAssistant(), or you call showPage() without a previous call to openAssistant(), the assistantOpened() signal is emitted. Similarly when closeAssistant() is called, assistantClosed() is emitted. In either case, if an error occurs, error() is emitted.

One QAssistantClient instance interacts with one Qt Assistant instance, so every time you call openAssistant(), showPage() or closeAssistant() they are applied to the particular Qt Assistant instance associated with the QAssistantClient.

Qt Assistant's documentation set can be altered using the command line arguments that are passed to the application when it is launched. When started without any options, Qt Assistant displays a default set of documentation. When Qt is installed, the default documentation set in Qt Assistant contains the Qt reference documentation as well as the tools that come with Qt, such as Qt Designer and qmake.

Use the setArguments() function to specify the command line arguments. You can add or remove documentation from Qt Assistant by adding and removing the relevant content files: The command line arguments are -addContentFile file.dcf and -removeContentFile file.dcf respectively. You can make Qt Assistant run customized documentation sets that are separate from the Qt documentation, by specifying a profile: -profile myapplication.adp. The profile format can also be used to alter several of Qt Assistant's properties such as its title and startpage.

The Documentation Content File (.dcf) and Qt Assistant Documentation Profile (.adp) formats are documented in the Qt Assistant Manual.

For a complete example using the QAssistantClient class, see the Simple Text Viewer example. The example shows how you can make Qt Assistant act as a customized help tool for your application using the QAssistantClient class combined with a Qt Assistant Document Profile.

See also Qt Assistant Manual and Simple Text Viewer Example.

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