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Comment by sleepytree | Hacker News Reader

Not a complete answer, but I hope Markdown is or becomes the standard for offline docs and text for local/offline consumption. I only ever write in markdown anyway (usually with http://obsidian.md).

The closest thing I know of for a service like RSS to download documents is [Dash for macOS - API Documentation Browser, Snippet Manager - Kapeli](https://kapeli.com/dash).

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

I first learned of Zeal several months ago...and i really like it. But, i forget about havign zeal installed and available, that my reflex is to instinctively reach for duck duck go, or stack overflow, or somesuch search engine, etc. So, i just gotta build up the habit. :-)

I understand completely. I even wrote an offline documentation browser [0] for Linux similar to Dash, and I reflexively search online too. It's a hard habit to break, but I think it's a UI/UX issue.

0: https://github.com/techwizrd/tarpon

First of all, thanks for reminding me that i'm not alone! :-)

Secondly, kudos on tarpon; very cool!!!

Markdown is too anemic for documentation without extensions. Sure, you can make do, but I would rather wet standardized on something more powerful.

I'm still loving asciidoc. Loads of extensions too so I can have PlantUML and Mermaid stuff too

I agree. We need a standardized format with support for both structured (classes, methods, etc.) and unstructured (language overview) documentation..

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