Problems when creating a Qt Compressed Help (qch) and Qt Help Collection (qch) file.
-
We are creating a desktop application using QT, and an important part of this application is the Help file. Every dialog has it's own Help button and Help page: in total about 175 .htm files, containing over 200 images.
So far I have been struggling with this task as the workflow using the QT Help generator (doc.qt.io/qt-5/qthelp-framework.html) is not very user-friendly, at least not in my eyes (I am not a programmer). Generating the project files (contents tree, keywords, about text,...), changing the layout (.css files are not supported), setting start page and home page: a complicated task.
Previous versions of our application were Windows only (using MFC instead of QT), and for creating a Windows Help file (.chm) we used an easy to use Help authoring tool.
The good news is that the manufacturers of this tool helped me out: they released a converter that will open a .chm file and convert it to QT Help, exporting a .qch and a .qhc file. This QtHelpConverter will create both the Qt Help Project file and the Qt Help Collection Project file (based on your input in a simple dialog) and call qhelpgenerator. Even the information from the .css file will be converted to in-line style code in each .htm file.
The QtHelpConverter is a free tool, and can be downloaded from www.helpandmanual.com/qt-help.html
As I am very happy with this application I want to share this information with other QT users: it will make your life much easier when creating a Help file for your application !Lex.
PS: I am not connected to the authors of Help and Manual, so no bias in this opinion.