How to open documentation in qch format in Debian based systems?

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I wanted to download C++ documentation and found cppreference-doc-en-qch in Debian's archive:

Description: C and C++ standard library reference (English, Qt Help variant) A version of online C and C++ standard library reference manual available at en.cppreference.com, suitable for viewing offline. . This package contains a Qt Help book.

dpkg -L cppreference-doc-en-qch reveals only /usr/share/cppreference/doc/qch/cppreference-doc-en-cpp.qch, and xdg-open doesn't know how to open it.

How do I actually read this piece of documentation I just installed, or, in general, qch files?

debian qt

posted 5 months ago

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Quasímodo‭

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Install Qt Assistant (either 5 or 6 works):
```
 apt install qt5-assistant
```
This might be already installed, the package in the question does depend on it but for some reason qt5-doc does not, it only recommends it.
Option 1: Load it with the CLI
- Register the help file in the Qt Assistant:
```
 assistant -register /usr/share/cppreference/doc/qch/cppreference-doc-en-cpp.qch
```
  It should output "Documentation successfully registered."
- Open the Qt Assistant:
```
 assistant
```
Option 2: Load it with the GUI
- Open the Qt Assistant:
```
 assistant
```
- In the window that opens, go to Edit > Preferences > Documentation > Add.
- In the file chooser dialogue box that opens, choose the qch file you want to view, i.e. /usr/share/cppreference/doc/qch/cppreference-doc-en-cpp.qch.
The program may take some time to update the search index; This will be indicated by a loading bar in the bottom right corner.
The documentation is now available through the program, you can select in the contents pane as depicted below or just search the index.

Documentation of std::basic_string in the Qt Assistant

Tested with Qt Assistant 5.15.13.

posted 5 months ago

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5mo ago

Quasímodo‭

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A web search turned up the Qt online documentation, which suggests using Qt Assistant to organize and read help files packaged as *.qch files.

That looks to be packaged by Debian as assistant-qt6. Alternatively, cppreference-doc-en-qch depends on qttools5-dev-tools which in turn pulls in qt5-assistant which provides /usr/lib/qt5/bin/assistant.

As an alternative in this specific case, Debian also packages what looks to be that same documentation in HTML format as cppreference-doc-en-html.

posted 5 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0