Using the latest octave ebuild sci-mathematics/octave-4.4.1, each time i start i have a popup saying "Impossibile copiare la collezione di aiuto in un file temporaneo. Le funzionalità di ricerca potrebbero risultarne compromesse. Cannot unregister index tables in file /usr/share/octave/4.4.1/doc/octave_interpreter.qhc." I'm not sure what this means, the file exist, and is own by root, which seems ok to me. I tried emerging with +doc, but this doesn't change anything. I also have another popup saying "Le notizie dalla comunità di Octave non sembrano essere disponibili.", which means that news from Octave aren't available. i dont care about it, but it might be related.
Please re-open if the issue is reproduced with 5.2.0.
Using octave 5.2.0, i still have the weird warning at start about "news". But not the original problem of missing doc file. I can even use the command help and actually get something displayed. So i guess it's ok now. Lot of strange things though. For exemple 'octave' will start the cli interface unless --gui is used. So I dont see a point of the other binary "octave-cli". It does the same..