Using Qt Assistant

To find text on the current page, select Edit > Find in Text. Enter the search term in the field. The search is incremental, meaning that the most relevant result is shown as you enter characters into the field.

If you select the Case sensitive checkbox, the search considers the case of the search term. For example, if you search for spin, it matches spin but not Spin.

To search forwards or backwards from your current position on the page, click Previous or Next.

To hide the find control, either click Close or press Esc.

Qt Assistant provides a powerful full text search engine. You can search for certain words or text in the Search window. Enter the text you want to look for and press Enter or click Search. The search is not case sensitive. For example, Foo, fOo and FOO are all treated as the same.

You can create complex queries using the FTS query syntax.

The following are examples of common search patterns:

• deep – lists all the documents that contain the word deep

• deep* – lists all the documents that contain a word beginning with deep

• deep copy – lists all documents that contain both deep and copy

• "deep copy" – list all documents that contain the phrase deep copy

The list of documents found is ordered according to the number of occurrences of the search text which they contain, with those containing the highest number of occurrences appearing first. Simply click any document in the list to display it in the Documentation window.

If the documentation has changed — for example, if documents have been added or removed — Qt Assistant will index them again.

Qt Assistant allows you to install any kind of documentation as long as it is organized in Qt compressed help files (*.qch). For example, you can view Qt reference documentation for several Qt versions at the same time. In many respects, this is very convenient since only one version of Qt Assistant is needed. However, at the same time it becomes more complicated when performing tasks like searching the index because most keywords are defined in more than one Qt version. This means that Qt Assistant will always ask the user to choose which one should be displayed.

We use documentation filters to solve this issue. A filter is identified by its name, and contains a list of filter attributes. An attribute is just a string and can be freely chosen. Attributes are defined by the documentation itself, which means that every documentation set usually has one or more attributes.

For example, the Qt Assistant documentation defines the attributes assistant and tools, whereas Qt Designer defines designer and tools. The filter to display all tools would then define only the attribute tools since this attribute is part of both documentation sets. Adding the attribute assistant to the filter would then only show Qt Assistant documentation since the Qt Designer documentation does not contain this attribute. Having an empty list of attributes in a filter will match all documentation. That is, it is equivalent to requesting unfiltered documentation.

To create and remove documentation filters, select Edit > Preferences > Filters.

To add a new filter, click Add, specify a filter name, and click OK. Then select the filter attributes in the Attributes field.

To delete a filter, select it and click Remove.

The filter toolbar allows you to apply a filter to the currently installed documentation. To show the filter toolbar, select View > Toolbars > Filter Toolbar.

To install and remove compressed help files, select Edit > Preferences > Documentation.

Click the Install button and choose the path of the compressed help file (*.qch) you would like to install. To delete a help file, select a documentation set in the list and click Remove.

To specify the homepage Qt Assistant displays when you click the Home button, select Edit > Preferences > Options.

Enter the URL of the home page or select Current Page to set the currently displayed page as your home page. To leave the home page blank, select Blank page. Select Restore to default to reset your home page to the default home page.

Qt Assistant handles the following command line options: