Dash - Documentation for 80+ APIs

[bmscmoreira]

Ok! Good to know! I'll be using this on 10.8, the 10.7 was just a quick test. But it's good to have both covered. Just bought Dash... worth every cent

[bogdansrc]

Really happy about my Dash purchase today. :-)

Hopping that extension update with option for applying the code directly arrives soonish :-)

 

I've encountered a problem while adding this. The issue is that while pressing a modifier (e.g. CMD or ALT), Alfred changes the subtext of the item. However, I am not able to provide an alternate subtext for each item, but only for the entire workflow.

 

So basically this is what happens:

1. You search for something and Dash returns results for both snippets and documentation

2. If you'd hold CMD the snippets' subtext would change to "Expand", but the documentation pages' subtext would also change to "Expand", which is not really nice

 

Ideally, I'd like the subtext to change to "Expand" for snippets and to "Open in browser" for documentation pages.

 

I've postponed this feature until I figure out a way of working around this (e.g. find a different wording that would work for both snippets and documentation), or until Andrew provides an option for workflows to provide alternate item subtexts.

[lmartins]

I've encountered a problem while adding this. The issue is that while pressing a modifier (e.g. CMD or ALT), Alfred changes the subtext of the item. However, I am not able to provide an alternate subtext for each item, but only for the entire workflow.

 

So basically this is what happens:

1. You search for something and Dash returns results for both snippets and documentation

2. If you'd hold CMD the snippets' subtext would change to "Expand", but the documentation pages' subtext would also change to "Expand", which is not really nice

 

Ideally, I'd like the subtext to change to "Expand" for snippets and to "Open in browser" for documentation pages.

 

I've postponed this feature until I figure out a way of working around this (e.g. find a different wording that would work for both snippets and documentation), or until Andrew provides an option for workflows to provide alternate item subtexts.

 

Andrew, please make it happen.

[bogdansrc]

Andrew, please make it happen.

Just a minor update: Andrew confirmed he'll look into it for Alfred version 2.0.4. Hopefully he'll decide to add it.

[lmartins]

Just a minor update: Andrew confirmed he'll look into it for Alfred version 2.0.4. Hopefully he'll decide to add it.

 

Nice to hear, and i hope he does. 

[jhuiting]

It took me a while to find the topic, but I just installed the workflow. Cool workflow, keep up the good work

[jxdwinter]

It's cool!

[OliverJAsh]

If you search for something with a special character in it (i.e. $), this workflow will not match any results.

 

I.e: http://cl.ly/image/3m1e0N0k3r1e

 

When I try to find this item by searching for `$eq`, I get: http://cl.ly/image/051d1u2S352e

 

Are special characters being escaped?

[bogdansrc]

If you search for something with a special character in it (i.e. $), this workflow will not match any results.

 

I.e: http://cl.ly/image/3m1e0N0k3r1e

 

When I try to find this item by searching for `$eq`, I get: http://cl.ly/image/051d1u2S352e

 

Are special characters being escaped?

 

Thanks for letting me know about this!

 

I think I fixed it. Redownload the workflow from kapeli.com/DashAlfredWorkflow.zip

Edited September 8, 2013 by bogdansrc

[willfarrell]

the alternate version of the dash workflow (with quick keywords for doc lookup) has been moved to https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred-dash-workflow

[taylorludwig]

I've encountered a problem while adding this. The issue is that while pressing a modifier (e.g. CMD or ALT), Alfred changes the subtext of the item. However, I am not able to provide an alternate subtext for each item, but only for the entire workflow.

 

So basically this is what happens:

1. You search for something and Dash returns results for both snippets and documentation

2. If you'd hold CMD the snippets' subtext would change to "Expand", but the documentation pages' subtext would also change to "Expand", which is not really nice

 

Ideally, I'd like the subtext to change to "Expand" for snippets and to "Open in browser" for documentation pages.

 

I've postponed this feature until I figure out a way of working around this (e.g. find a different wording that would work for both snippets and documentation), or until Andrew provides an option for workflows to provide alternate item subtexts.

Really looking forward to this feature.  

I'd actually prefer separate keywords for docs and snippets.  That would also allow you to only show the "Expand" modifier sub text when searching for snippets. 

 

Are there any current work arounds to make it expand by default?

[bogdansrc]

Are there any current work arounds to make it expand by default?

 

Nope, sorry.

[Florian]

This is beautiful. Both the app and the workflow. I find myself constantly working away from any internet and this is awesome. 

 

1. It would be very useful to be able to restrict the search to a specific language. For example when I search "floor" that exists in pretty much every language, I'd like to have "dash php floor" restrict the search of "floor" to "php".

 

2. And in the same vein, but further again, it'd be really cool - and yes it's quite the bit of work - to have keywords for each API for restricted searches (example: "js" instead of "dash js", "php" instead of "dash php"). 

 

3. Also, is it possible - and if not can you make it so? - to search dash for other things than the actual functions? For example, if I forgot "strlen" in php, I might type "dash php string length" and find "strlen". That would really be great.

 

Keep up the good work. Already bought the app

 

Edit: oh well, request 1 and 2 are already taken care of in the alternate workflow posted in this thread

Edited October 10, 2013 by Florian

[Florian]

And one more thing, it turns out that the display of "Nothing Found" is really annoying because in that case I want nothing to be returned to alfred so that I can run my google default search simply by pressing enter.

[bogdansrc]

This is beautiful. Both the app and the workflow. I find myself constantly working away from any internet and this is awesome. 

 

1. It would be very useful to be able to restrict the search to a specific language. For example when I search "floor" that exists in pretty much every language, I'd like to have "dash php floor" restrict the search of "floor" to "php".

 

 

2. And in the same vein, but further again, it'd be really cool - and yes it's quite the bit of work - to have keywords for each API for restricted searches (example: "js" instead of "dash js", "php" instead of "dash php"). 

 

3. Also, is it possible - and if not can you make it so? - to search dash for other things than the actual functions? For example, if I forgot "strlen" in php, I might type "dash php string length" and find "strlen". That would really be great.

 

Keep up the good work. Already bought the app

 

Edit: oh well, request 1 and 2 are already taken care of in the alternate workflow posted in this thread

 

1 & 2: Dash allows keywords for each docset (see http://kapeli.com/guide/guide#docsetKeywords) or for collections of docsets (using search profiles - see http://kapeli.com/guide/guide#searchProfiles). The correct format would be "dash php:{query}". You can also change the workflow itself so that you can search for "php {query}" directly. This is explained in the workflow's README.

 

You can also use https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred-dash-workflow, which I think you already found.

 

3: That's Google's job, not Dash. Dash is for "I want to read the docs for X", when you know exactly what X is or at least have a pretty good idea. For when you have no idea what a function is called or what you need to do, you should Google. This is because no matter how much I'd try to allow searches like the one you described, Dash will never be even remotely as good as Google (or any other search engine).

 

And one more thing, it turns out that the display of "Nothing Found" is really annoying because in that case I want nothing to be returned to alfred so that I can run my google default search simply by pressing enter.

 

I agree. I don't use search fallbacks, so I didn't notice this. Dash won't return "Nothing Found" anymore in the next update (version 1.9.2). Thanks for the feedback!

[bogdansrc]

Dash 2 has been released and it improves the Dash Alfred workflow by dynamically defining keywords. This means that you can now search using "css {query}" instead of "dash css:{query}".

[deanishe]

Hi Bogdan,

 

Longtime fan of Dash (and esp. the Alfred integration). The new version is absolutely amazing.

 

Thanks so much!

 

P.S. Don't you need to change your avatar and the workflow icon now? 

Edited March 9, 2014 by deanishe

[Florian]

Cheat sheets are awesome ! When will we see one for HTML special characters ? I'm still unsatisfied with any other alfred workflow that tried to tackle that problem so far...

[rice.shawn]

@Florian: Here's something funny. A while ago, I started to try to write just a quick little workflow to do just that. I put together a nice little script filter in order to display the result and then let you copy the value to your clipboard, but, and this is the funny part, whenever it went through, Alfred would treat the html encoded character (in its return xml) as, well, an encoded character, giving me the same output that I put in. Never did figure out a way around that.

 

Hilarious.

[bogdansrc]

Cheat sheets are awesome ! When will we see one for HTML special characters?

 

I guess whenever someone will make one . Instructions can be found at https://github.com/Kapeli/cheatset#readme.

[bogdansrc]

Never did figure out a way around that.

 

Might be worth a try: double-pass encode the values. So for example " " would become " "

[rice.shawn]

Might be worth a try: double-pass encode the values. So for example " " would become " "

 

Thanks! That worked. I can't believe I didn't think about that. Well, here's the workflow.

[bogdansrc]

@Florian I just pushed an HTML Entities cheat sheet to Dash. You can find it in Preferences > Downloads > Cheat Sheets

[Florian]

@bogdansrc & @Shawn Rice

You are cool.

[Florian]

I'm gonna surf this wave of responsiveness from you, @bogdansrc, and ask something else that's been bothering me : it would be really cool to be able to copy the name of a function right from alfred. 

Often I'm looking up the correct spelling or the full name of a function and I'd just want to copy that...

 

Thanks for the amazing work !