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The 1 Minute Guide to using Qt Assistant

Under Windows, Qt Assistant is available as a menu option on the Qt menu. On Unix, run $QTDIR/bin/assistant from an xterm.

When you start up Qt Assistant, you will be presented with a standard main-window style application, with a menu bar and toolbar. Below these, on the left hand side is a navigation window called the Sidebar, and on the right, taking up most of the space, is the documentation window. By default, the Qt Reference Documentation's home page is shown in the documentation window.

Qt Assistant works in a similar way to a web browser. If you click underlined text (which signifies a cross-reference), the documentation window will present the relevant page. You can bookmark pages of particular interest and you can click the Previous and Next toolbar buttons to navigate within the pages you've visited.

Although Qt Assistant can be used just like a web browser to navigate through the Qt documentation set, Qt Assistant offers a powerful means of navigation that web browsers don't provide. Qt Assistant uses an intelligent algorithm to index all the pages in the documentation sets that it presents so that you can search for particular words and phrases.

To perform a search, click the Index tab on the Sidebar (or click Ctrl+I). In the 'Look For' line edit enter a word, e.g. 'homedirpath'. As you type, words are found and highlighted in a list beneath the line edit. If the highlighted text matches what you're looking for, double click it, (or press Enter) and the documentation window will display the relevant page. You rarely have to type in the whole word before Qt Assistant finds a match.

For some words there may be more than one possible page that is relevant. For example, enter 'setenabled' in the 'Look For' line edit. As you type, words are found and highlighted in the list beneath the line edit, as before. Once the highlighted text matches what you're looking for, double click it, (or press Enter). In the case of setEnabled, it is a function name which occurs in several classes, so a dialog pops up listing the possible choices. Click the choice you're interested in (or move to it using the Up and Down arrow keys and press Enter). The relevant page will display in the documentation window.

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