I have a couple of simple but related tools today, both from the same author. At left is rfc, and at right is httpdoc.
I’ve known about rfc for a while, but got a reminder about httpdoc earlier this week via e-mail. Since they both have the same style and same creator, it makes sense to lump them together.
rfc, when supplied with a number or a topic line, will pull the text of that RFC from the web and dump it into your $PAGER. No fancy formatting, no color-coded document histories, just one-shot quick access to RFCs all the way back to … well, back to number 1.
The home page has a three-step process for “installing” rfc into your $HOME directory, although I daresay it could be rearranged to allow for more than just one person to use. In any case, it takes very little effort and rfc itself won’t bog down your system, seeing as it’s just a bash creation.
As an added bonus, rfc will keep its documents stored locally, so you don’t have to re-download a request. If you rely on rfc frequently, you’ll probably be interested in some of the built-in actions — like update or list, which give rfc a little more oomph, and search, which … well, you should be able to figure that one out. 🙄
httpdoc is similar, in a way. As you can see above, httpdoc becomes an offline reference tool for HTTP documentation. In the screenshot above, I only showed the 404 status code, but httpdoc can also return documentation on header fields, if you need that.
I can see where httpdoc is still being updated even in the past few days, so I expect there will be more references to come.
httpdoc is written in go, so you’ll need that installed before it will play along. There are also some environment variables that you’ll want to adjust before using it, but it’s nothing complicated.
Both of these tools might strike you as too simple to be noteworthy, but that will depend a lot on your perspective. I use things like dict on a daily basis, and even have it hot-wired for thesaurus entries as part of my .bashrc.
If you have a similar need for RFC or HTTP documentation at the command line, then you might find both of these install-worthy. Necessity is the mother of invention. Or is it the other way around … ? 😉
Inconsolation 