Bug 387891

Summary:	[suggestion]: add support for compiled Qt help collections (qthelp:)
Product:	[Applications] khelpcenter	Reporter:	RJVB <rjvbertin>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Documentation Editorial Team <kde-doc-english>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	simonandric5
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Compiled Sources
OS:	All
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description RJVB 2017-12-14 09:39:59 UTC

It could be very practical if KHelpCentre (KHC) also supported compiled Qt help documents (.qch) or better yet, collections of such documentation.

This would make it a prime candidate for use as an external documentation browser for KDE's own IDE, KDevelop. It already uses KHC for its own handbook; with .qch support KHC could be used as a browser for 2 of the 3 standard documentation plugins that come with KDevelop (I'm currently working on an external viewer mod for just the QtHelp plugin that uses Qt's Assistant).

Support for user-defined collections would be important here, for 2 main reasons:
- developer documentation is developer-specific, may vary over time and can be installed in multiple locations, making a simple fixed/hardcoded repository location inpractical.
- on Mac, there's a bug somewhere in the QtHelp implementation or its underlying APIs which limits the number of documentation files that can be handled as a single collection (QTBUG-59664). Given the symptoms when that limit is exceeded a similar issue could well exists on other BSD variants too.

I'd be interested in participating in this project.

Comment 1 RJVB 2017-12-14 09:53:36 UTC

An additional feature that should probably be considered and copied from Qt's Assistant (also for general usability) is support for tabs, so users can switch quickly between different documents.