private_comments VS zeal

I wrote Private Comments[1] specifically to address this problem in code. My coworkers can maintain context about how a given thing works months after the fact. I can't. So, I leave private comments throughout the code. Things they'd never want committed, but save me hours of re-leaning when next i encounter a given piece of code.

Currently has plugins for Vim (proof of concept) and Emacs (actually good). It'd be lovely if one of you folks would make a VSCode plugin for it. I've thoroughly documented the API and diagrammed the code flow you'd need[2], so that this would be as easy as possible to add to your favorite editor.

[1]: https://github.com/masukomi/private_comments

[2]: https://masukomi.github.io/private_comments/

A while ago I wrote a mini API server in order to let me leave "private comments" on a codebase.

There's also Zeal (https://zealdocs.org/) which is basically the same as Dash but open source and runs on non-Mac devices.

For offline tech documentation you can use Zeal. Must have tool for poor internet connection places. Present in ubuntu repos. https://zealdocs.org/

ads don't have to proprietary

here's one example of ads in FOSS https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/779

There’s stuff like https://zealdocs.org/ that allow you to take all relevant documentation with you so offline coding will work.

If you just want to be productive, you could also bring a lot of books or downloaded tutorials on a drive.

Btw, make sure your drive is encrypted and you think of a way to backup your data so you don’t lose the offline progress.

I’d suggest you look into Kiwix¹ and also Zeal².

1. https://www.kiwix.org/

2. https://zealdocs.org/

For offline documentation, I use Zeal (called Dash on macos) which looks/works almost identically to rubydoc.info but much faster since it's offline, has a standard interface for all installed language documentations, and only 1 global hotkey away while programming.

I highly recommend using local solutions to this local issue: Zeal[1] (aka Dash[2] on MacOS)

Load up the "docsets" of your languages (lightly edited HTML docs for indexing purposes) and use a global keyboard shortcut (F8 for me) to pull up Python/Postgres/Terraform docs, searching for the right function without internet query.

This isn't straight up applicable to all questions of course, but "How do I search regular expressions in Python again?" is now as easy as "re"

Note that the docsets can be converted from normal HTML ones via doc2dash[3], especially useful to load up custom docs like private providers.

[1]: https://zealdocs.org/