Offline documentation :: What does the community think?

[jay@moduscreate.com]

I've used offline docs for Ext JS since 2006 (yui-ext), and feel that they are important to be available for users who are traveling, in a secure location or just want fast docs fed from their machine. Sencha Touch no longer comes with offline documentation and per the following thread, offline documentation will no longer be available: http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthre...1&goto=newpost

What does the community think? Should this be a poll?

[grgur]

I can see Mitch here saying: "Why, can't use use jsduck and generate it youself?"

But, yeah, I'm with you. If you can generate, you might as well pre-generate it. Trans-atlantic flights would be much more enjoyable with offline docs available.

[mitchellsimoens]

I personally would agree that we need to have offline documentation so I wouldn't stop at just saying use jsduck It's just a means to get around this shift.

I personally use vhosts and update them with each new release so when I want to view ST2 docs, I just go to http://st2/docs/ and I'm good which this broke without using jsduck. I don't have much of a leg to stand on when I can easily get around it and I work for Sencha

I like threads like these where the community voices up. It's very important that we at Sencha here constructive feedback from the community.

[jakerella]

I simply haven't had a need to use the docs offline, but I can easily see myself needing to at some point. That said, I wonder if the existing API documentation site could be altered to be available offline. You know, hit a button and the site issues a request (or multiple) to download all of the docs and store it in LocalStorage for use while offline?

Just a thought... in any case, there should be documentation available, but if I can be generated, I don't know that I care too much (although I apparently need to get jsduck in order to be ready to do that when I need to).

[peterdehaan]

@Jay,

What about if we provided a separate, standalone ZIP with all the docs for the product/version?


@jakerella,

The only downside of a LocalStorage type approach would possibly be that docs can sometimes be somewhat large. Looking at a local copy of the Sencha Touch 2.1.0 b1 SDK on my HD, it looks like the /docs/ folder is about 94.6MB and the /examples/ folder is another 47.4MB. That'd be a lot of data to try and push into somebody's local storage.

-peter

[jakerella]

@Peter Yeah, not so good.

Other than shipping the generation tool along with the SDK, I don't see how Sencha can eliminate the offline docs. If it's a matter of space, maybe you eliminate the guides and keep the rest? Or like I said, ship the tool to generate the docs with instructions on how to do so.

[stan229]

Generally I use the online variant (docs.sencha.com/touch/) However, there comes a point where I'm on a train or somewhere without connectivity and have an epiphany when I realize I have offline docs available on my local httpd.

While it is nice that it already comes bundled, I wouldn't mind a separate doc zip too much either. Might even be cleaner that way.

[mitchellsimoens]

I'm not sure why we don't ship the docs locally like we always have. I know we made the move so that we can keep the online docs updated for any bugs and such but knowing that the online docs are always up to date and the docs shipped with that release is the docs at that point in time is ok IMO.

[bricemason]

I don't see why they can't ship locally. We'll know where to go for the most up to date information.

I would like to see the doc browsing experience improved on my tablet though. Using the docs on both my iPad and Nexus 10 is slow and painful. At least it doesn't seem to crash anymore but I'd like to see this get better.

Thanks for listening,

Brice

[ingo.hefti]

I'm not sure why we don't ship the docs locally like we always have. I know we made the move so that we can keep the online docs updated for any bugs and such but knowing that the online docs are always up to date and the docs shipped with that release is the docs at that point in time is ok IMO.

fully agree!