qt-creator VS zeal

qt-creator is a nice open-source IDE:

https://github.com/qt-creator/qt-creator

They offer binary releases, but it's also possible to compile from source without too much trouble. Written in C++, it's pretty snappy. Supports meson.

Qt Creator is a great C/C++ editor

There is already open source dash (https://zealdocs.or) although they don't provide Mac build because of an agreement to use some of dash's lists.

But you can build it on mac (https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/wiki/Build-Instructions-for...)

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/

Here is the github discussion created by dash author explaining the deal https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/issues/24#issue-17915169

It’s not widely advertised (probably this is the deal) but Zeal works fine on macOS, see this: https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal/wiki/Build-Instructions-for...

You don’t need to build it yourself, there is a brew formula.