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Readme.so – Easiest Way to Create a Readme
- podiki 5y agoNice! Would be great to have non md support as well (org especially, maybe .info, txt...).
- doublerabbit 5y ago> This site is optimized for desktop Please visit readme.so on a desktop to create your readme! So it's not the easiest way to create a readme.
- capableweb 5y agoI guess if you normally create your READMEs on the phone, then no. But then, how often do you create READMEs on a phone? I can count on no hands the amount of times I've done that in my life.
- oneeyedpigeon 5y agoI'm also on mobile. No, I've probably never had a need to create a README from my phone, but it would be useful to be able to learn about this service. I wonder what they're doing that's so complicated it doesn't work on mobile...
- slenk 5y agoVisit on a website and you will see, it needs widescreen. Maybe flip your phone horizontal and request desktop site?
- podiki 5y agoCould just be the view/layout? What about forcing desktop version on mobile browser?
- katherinecodes 5y agoThe mobile version is in progress. The layout doesn't quite work on mobile, and the editor library I used doesn't work on mobile, so it requires some tweaks. The reason it's not done yet is because I have a job and this is a side project :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tracer4201 5y agoHey this is a pretty cool project. Nice job. One of my struggles at work has been inheriting some code base from whichever team that has no documentation or it’s not even clear why something was built in the first place. Sometimes we’re left scratching our heads — “how do I even build this thing?” I’m a strong believer in a concise Readme file.
- treeman79 5y agoSomeone once told me, assume the person after that is easily annoyed enjoys hunting people and knows where you live. After having to take a number of abandoned but important projects. I can fully appreciate both sides.
- lobocinza 5y agoKnowledge management is often forgot. When starting a new project I like to put some effort on summary, (planned) features, (expected) usage/API and license before I begin coding.
- jitl 5y agoWatch out, the .so domain presents a lot of headaches
- toper-centage 5y agoLike what?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- config_yml 5y agohttps://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1360246445341818882 https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1360246445341818882
- breakfastduck 5y agoApparently a nightmare to renew. It is a somalian domain name after all. I don't understand why its so trendy. Notion went down a few months ago due to issues with their .so domain and they said they're planning to move.
- capableweb 5y agonotion.com redirects to notion.so, so they already own that domain too.
- st_goliath 5y agoSome years back, I used to be the proud owner of "libgoliath.so", but then they suddenly decided to hike the price to IIRC Euro 80,- per year (either that, or prove that I have a Somalian citicenship). So I dropped that. So now I'm the proud owner of "goliath32.com", which I currently keep parked until I finally, hopefully get around to overhauling my 10 year old personal site.
- vanderZwan 5y ago"Price hike", really? I would not exactly call 6.67 euros a month a rip-off. Given your reaction to it, it seems like a very reasonable policy to ensure that people claiming a URL really have plans with it, while keeping out foreigners parking on Somalian webpace for the lulz. EDIT: some context that is probably relevant to this topic that I should not presume to be familiar with everyone is the controversy surrounding .io domains: https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-k-is-making-web-domain-profits-from-a-shady-cold-war-land-deal/ https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-...
- jdorfman 5y agoSaw this on Product Hunt. Can't wait to use it for my projects. Great work!
- samstave 5y agoThis looks really good! I second .md support. Can you please give a page-wide dark-mode option, and even each section?
- gkoberger 5y agoAs the founder of a quite similarly named company, this looks great :) Not sure if you're looking for a job Katherine, but if you are my email is in my profile!
- parhamn 5y agoThis felt genuine. But I must admit, asking someone launching something if they're looking for a job rubbed me the wrong way. :shrug:
- gkoberger 5y agoI would never try to dampen someone's enthusiasm for launching a company! However, based on how she talks about readme.so on Twitter and the fact that it's free and open source, it's clear she built it just to build something cool. If she's open to a job, then she gets to continue working on something called ReadMe that's in a similar vein! If she's not, for whatever reason, then there's no harm done and I hope she takes my comment as a compliment :)
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoIf I was the person who launched this, being offered a job like this would be really cool even if I didn't take it.
- nyellin 5y agoI love the concept of Readme.io but I chose Sphinx over Readme.io for my startup despite starting out with Readme and really wanting it to work. A few issues: 1. Linking other pages is buggy. Sometimes Readme autocompletes the page name and sometimes it doesn't. In general, the UI feels a little buggy and that's a big issue given that it's the entire reason I'm using your product. 2. I couldn't figure out how to make my docs publically available during the trial. I still don't know if this is because actually making your docs public is a paid feature or if I couldn't find the right button. 3. I desperately needed an export to pdf and that wasn't available during the trial despite the promise on the home page that the trial includes all features. 4. My cofounder thought the price was a little high given how easily we could handle docs ourselves. There were some things I really liked: 1. I love the way you can embed API keys in the docs based on the reader's identify. 2. The API related features also look cool, although they aren't relevant for us. Lastly, I'm not a customer in the end but one feature that I would have paid for (at the time when I was still evaluating this) is the ability to password protect docs and allow access only to specific people you invite. (Not paid users on your own team though. Just people you invite as readers.) We're still mostly in stealth mode but we do have prospects trying out our software regularly and would like to send them a nonpublic version of the docs that they can see. (Hence my desire to export to pdf, but private docs would be better than pdf.)
- togaen 5y agoWhy is this easier than opening a text editor?
- bauerd 5y agoIt is not about opening a text editor. It's about what you would type into that editor. The value provided is in the templates, not in the editor.
- system2 5y agoIf someone is writing readmes all the time, why wouldn't that person have a pandadoc or similar template for this task?
- Phil-bitplex 5y agoYou're exactly right - if you're writing readme's all the time, you'd have templates ready to go. I only write readme's maybe once every few months or perhaps once a year, and having a template (interactive like this one, or otherwise) that someone else has thought about is super useful to me.
- crubier 5y agoLol not sure if this is a joke or not. Who writes readmes all the time? And where does the project state that it targets these people ?
- stunt 5y agoI think that meant to be a joke. I actually do create a few README files every month (cos of Microservices), but I still don't understand why someone would use a tool to generate README files.
- lobocinza 5y agoI wrote a README.md template because I started a bunch of projects of my own in the last month but I haven't used it so far and it is not more than a bunch of headers plus a license boilerplate.
- aparsons 5y agoA VSCode extension (triggered on README.* files) that does this would be very nice to have
- lenn0x 5y agoI went ahead and created vscode-readme it takes the templates used on readme.so and creates a snippet per section and if you use the readme snippet it combines all the sections https://github.com/ThreeCommaIO/vscode-readme https://github.com/ThreeCommaIO/vscode-readme. I just published to the extensions marketplace too.
- aparsons 5y agoExcellent! One of my favorite HN moments :)
- ilaksh 5y agoTo me the biggest thing is that I don't make a lot of tables in markdown so being able to drag and drop that would be easier than looking it up. Although having a list of potential sections is helpful too. I am wondering if there is something like a snippet database plugin for any text editor that would allow you to easily look things up without googling into Stack Overflow. Or maybe it would literally do that behind the scenes. Because there are so many times where you just need a short example of how to use something so you get the syntax and core parameters or whatever right. Even for basic things like making a table in markdown. Which I think uses the pipe bar and hyphens but not sure.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- foolinaround 5y agoNice! - It should also be able to generate a pdf on demand - It should have support for asciidoc (generate output in it)
- crubier 5y agoNice! - You should realize that requesting random features to a 1-person FOSS project in a derogatory way is not cool - You should offer to pay or help out if you want features - You should consider working on communicating more nicely is an important skill
- foolinaround 5y ago"derogatory" - really? can you point out how? How would you phrase a feature request?
- _kst_ 5y agoMy first thought was to wonder why I'd want a README in a shared object.
- rubicks 5y agoTo override at load-time the `usage` function in the executable via `LD_PRELOAD`.
- arey_abhishek 5y agoGreat work! The editor is simple enough that it works. Even using the left sidebar as a checklist of items to include in a readme makes this useful.
- sdesol 5y agoBy all early metrics, this project looks like it can become extremely popular and healthy. If you switch to the impact view in the following: https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=window%3A30&r=github%3Akatherinepeterson%2Freadme.so&v=repo https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=wind... And look at the impact chart at the bottom, it has all the signs of a healthy/popular project. A high number of contributors in Zone 3 indicates strong interest. A decent number of contributors in Zone 2, indicates high individual contributions to the project. And having no contributors in Zone 1 is the most important, as it means the work is being fairly distributed among Zone 2 contributors. Normally for a project to be this fresh (23 days), you would expect somebody in Zone 1, but there isn't any, which is a very strong indicator of popularity and an even distribution of work that should make it more viable in the long run. Note: Don't install my tool as the license in the docker image is out of date and needs to be updated. Edit: Any reason for the downvoting? I know it is my tool but it does show insights that is relevant to the repository.
- Noumenon72 5y agoI can't tell what region on the page you are referring to with Zone 1, 2, and 3. There are four quadrants and they're not numbered. I didn't downvote, but you could do this kind of analysis on any link to a github repo and I don't think people want it to become a habit.
- sdesol 5y agoIn the impact view, the zones are shown in the top left quadrant. I guess I could find a way to make it more obvious.
- Noumenon72 5y agoOh! Well, you need a way to link to the page with the impact tab open, since I never noticed there were tabs at all! It's still very unclear that the left quadrant is a mini-map of the other three quadrants. I recommend just graying out the top left and writing "Zone 1 - High Impact" somewhere inside the quadrant it describes.
- ggrelet 5y agoIs this related to vim.so and the knowledge content website creator slip.so?
- hvocode 5y agoThis would be useful as part of the new repo creation workflow on GitHub too. Instead of just getting an empty readme, pick the sections you want and start with one that just needs to be filled in. Could autopopulate some sections too (eg, license). I’d rather that so I can edit in my regular editor without having to use a separate site and web editor to get that initial template.
- duxup 5y agoI honestly was just thinking of rewriting a bunch of readmes at my workplace. Documentation is not our strong suit and I was wondering where to start with a good template that has some level of... professionalism / proven.
- ejstembler 5y agoNice! One suggestion I have is replace the ```bash references with ```console
- zmix 5y agoNow if it would have YAML front-matter... The nice thing with front matters is, they can populate meta elements in the resulting HTML.
- mfts0 5y agoCongratulations to Katherine for this amazing project. I do believe this will improve the overall developer experience. I was so excited I made a video about it and shared my thoughts on why and how GitHub should integrate this. https://youtu.be/kfOimInsnr4 https://youtu.be/kfOimInsnr4