Convert all qt documentation into text files

Leon Chase

• 1 min read

To convert all Qt documentation into text files, follow these steps:

1. Download the Qt Documentation

You need to fetch the HTML files from the official Qt documentation site.

Option 1: Use wget to Download HTML Files

Run the following command to mirror the documentation:

wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent -P qt-docs https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/

This will download all Qt 6 documentation into the qt-docs folder.

Option 2: Clone the Qt Documentation Repository

You can also get the official documentation source from Qt’s Git repository:

git clone https://code.qt.io/qt/qtdoc.git

2. Convert HTML to Text

Once you have the HTML files, you need to extract the text content.

Method 1: Use lynx (Command Line Browser)

You can batch convert the HTML files into text using:

find qt-docs -name "*.html" -exec sh -c 'lynx -dump "{}" > "{}.txt"' \;

This will create .txt versions of all HTML files.

Method 2: Use html2text (Python-based)

You can install html2text and process all files:

pip install html2text
find qt-docs -name "*.html" -exec sh -c 'html2text "{}" > "{}.txt"' \;

Method 3: Use pandoc

Convert HTML files to text using:

find qt-docs -name "*.html" -exec sh -c 'pandoc "{}" -t plain -o "{}.txt"' \;

3. Organize the Text Files

Once converted, move the .txt files to a separate directory:

mkdir qt-docs-text
find qt-docs -name "*.txt" -exec mv "{}" qt-docs-text/ \;