[ANN] RDoc Dashboard Widget

[David Felstead]

Hi everyone - sorry for the cross-post from the rails list, but since I
don't normally post here...

This is just a quick announcement to let people know that I've built a
basic RDoc Dashboard widget for Mac OS X Tiger. It's still beta-ish,
but seems to work okay for me - and it's a convenient reference tool to
boot

It will read any RDoc repository (http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/ is the
default, but http://api.rubyonrails.com/ works great as well) and lets
you check your documentation without having to open a Safari/Firefox
window.

Anyways, any bug reports/criticism/comments are welcome... you can
grab the widget from:

http://widgets.precisionis.com.au/

Known bugs from recently received feedback include some issues with
scrolling, which are being fixed. Also on the request list is the
ability to resize the left-hand navigation pane and a method for using
and remembering the URLs of multiple RDoc repositories, so these
changes are also underway.

I'm also working on an IRB widget which should be done shortly, if
anyone's interested.

Have fun!

-David Felstead

 

[Gavin Kistner]

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Hi everyone - sorry for the cross-post from the rails list, but
since I
don't normally post here...

This is just a quick announcement to let people know that I've built a
basic RDoc Dashboard widget for Mac OS X Tiger. It's still beta-ish,
but seems to work okay for me - and it's a convenient reference
tool to
boot

Hot damn, that's awesome! Just what I was looking for and thinking of
when Tiger came out.

Four requests:
1) Allow it to take file:// urls (for local speedy caches) e.g.
file:///Users/gavinkistner/Sites/Ruby/doc/index.html

2) (formatting) The separation of methods is not easy to visually
see. I suggest making the method heads bold, monospaced font, and
with additional vertical padding above (and possibly a line below,
and possibly indent their contents).

3) It's nice to click on a method and see the source code but...how
do I get back?

4) (lotta work, I assume) Option to use ri information from the local
system instead of parsing HTML from RDoc

One bug:
1) After supplying the file:// URL and getting 404 in the left pane,
I typed in the default ruby-doc address again. Nothing is showing up
in the Classes pane. I can switch to Files and Methods and see
content there, but returning to Classes shows emptiness. Typing and
clearing in the filter box still leaves it empty. Only by removing
and re-adding the widget could I get it to show up again.


Despite all the above, I'll be immediately installing this on all my
other machines and using it. Thanks!

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[Gavin Kistner]

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Also on the request list is [...]
remembering the URLs of multiple RDoc repositories, so these
changes are also underway.

I was originally envisioning the above as tabs (or some other form of
mutually-exclusive UI widget like a radio button or drop-down list).

I was just thinking - I'd love to have the ability to merge a couple
repositories. Obviously the HTML wouldn't magically change to include
cross-links between classes in different repositories, but I'd love
to be able to merge all the classes/methods from Core and StdLib, for
example.

(I suppose I could also do that with my own local rdoc crawl if need
be.)

So, if you weren't already considering it, I request that there be a
way to select (checkboxes? multi-select list?) more than one
repository at once.

--Apple-Mail-2-516091981--