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Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

omniref.com

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Re: Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

#3

Post by treystout »

I've always liked what Mercurial's docs were trying to do (http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/customizing-the-output-of-me...) by having comments at every paragraph of their docs. It's done about 10% as well as it could be though. You almost want stackoverflow style questions to link to direct paragraphs or maybe even sentences.

Maybe overlaying something like rap genius' tools on existing docs is enough?

Looks really nice so far, but I don't use ruby so can't vouch for accuracy of search etc...

Re: Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

#5

Post by csmattryder »

montanalow wrote: post #2

Tim & I are planning to spend quite a bit more time on this, what do you other devs want to see in documentation search? Full stack? Multi version? Comments? Examples? IDE integration? What would make your life better?

Some feedback I have, is that I would like the sidebar to have a view that was less 'cluttered'. I know what String#new does, so could I just view all the methods available - sans description? Like how ruby-doc does it, super fast to spot what I need to lookup and click it.

Another is that the sidebar seems to take up a fair bit of space (especially as I use a half-sized browser window).

I really want to see this flourish, it seems a lot faster than searching ruby-doc! Keep at it, guys! :)

Re: Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

#6

Post by dljsjr »

treystout wrote: post #3

I've always liked what Mercurial's docs were trying to do ( http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/customizing-the-output-of-me... ) by having comments at every paragraph of their docs. It's done about 10% as well as it could be though. You almost want stackoverflow style questions to link to direct paragraphs or maybe even sentences. Maybe overlaying something like rap genius' tools on existing docs is enough? Looks really…

This seems to be a Bryan O'Sullivan thing, as the online version of Real World Haskell looks the exact same.

http://book.realworldhaskell.org

Re: Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

#7

Post by derwiki »

montanalow wrote: post #2

Tim & I are planning to spend quite a bit more time on this, what do you other devs want to see in documentation search? Full stack? Multi version? Comments? Examples? IDE integration? What would make your life better?

Enumerate options that are obscured by inheritance. For example, to look at:

http://www.omniref.com/?q=cache_action

I don't know what options are valid in `cache_action`. The "real" answer, AFAICT, is to keep walking up the source code until you find the AbstractWhatever that actually defines the options.

Re: Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

#8

Post by timr »

yale wrote: post #4

Looking great. My only wish would be having a list of constants and methods in the sidebar after selecting a class or module.

Thanks! We have this other document view that we're going to make more prominent in the coming days:

http://www.omniref.com/docs/ruby/stdlib/2.0.0-p247/classes/E...

The "preview" that shows up from search pages links to it, but it's definitely not obvious where/how. We'll fix that!

Re: Show HN: Omniref - a better search site for Ruby documentation

#10

Post by timr »

csmattryder wrote: post #5
montanalow wrote: post #2

Tim & I are planning to spend quite a bit more time on this, what do you other devs want to see in documentation search? Full stack? Multi version? Comments? Examples? IDE integration? What would make your life better?

Some feedback I have, is that I would like the sidebar to have a view that was less 'cluttered'. I know what String#new does, so could I just view all the methods available - sans description? Like how ruby-doc does it, super fast to spot what I need to lookup and click it. Another is that the sidebar seems to take up a fair bit of space (especially as I use a half-sized browser window). I really want to see this flo…

Thanks! Is this more like what you're looking for?

http://www.omniref.com/docs/ruby/stdlib/2.0.0-p247/classes/A...

We're still working out how to display the search results, but we definitely want to strip them down more. Thanks for the feedback.

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