James Gray
3/19/2006 4:08:00 PM
On Mar 18, 2006, at 10:47 PM, James Britt wrote:
> James Edward Gray II wrote:
>> On Mar 18, 2006, at 7:59 PM, James Britt wrote:
>>> Trans wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Which is a standard library, not a core class. It shouldn't be in
>>>>> those docs at all.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks. So there are some issue with the docs themselves.
>>>
>>>
>>> One being that people have to know whether something is 'core'
>>> or 'stdlib' when they look for it.
>> I offered my best idea for an improvement to this some time ago
>> on the Ruby Documentation list. Did you not feel building an
>> index page grouped by functionality held any value James?
>
> Please correct me if my recollection is off, but that would have
> been a manual process, no? (My apologies if there was a more
> direct solution and I let it slip off my radar.)
True, it was a manual process, but I see the maintenance as quite low
and even addressed that in my message. For the curios, here is what
I suggested to the ruby-doc list:
> I know there are plans to improve documentation searching, but I
> think a simple layer of links could greatly improve documentation
> access.
>
> I don't know about others, but I easily look something up in
> String, Array, and/or Hash grossly more often than anything else.
> To me that means they should be easy to reach. String is currently
> the worst:
>
> 1. Go to documentation site.
> 2. Click Core link.
> 3. Scroll... a lot.
> 4. Click String link.
>
> We could easily cut that in half, couldn't we? If the front page
> had some handy categorized links:
>
> Data Structures (or whatever)
> Array, Hash, String, Struct
>
> And why stop there? Separation of the standard lib makes little
> sense here. Change the background color of those links, tag them
> with an icon, or whatever and there's no reason we can't add those
> too:
>
> Data Structures
> Array, Hash, OpenStruct,
> Set, String, Struct
>
> I'm sure I missed a ton. The above is just meant as an example.
>
> So far, I've just been talking about easy access, but this could
> address other issues. For example, Ruby's reflection is terrificly
> powerful and maybe the best hid feature of the language! <laughs>
> There are at least three major classes involved. Quick, name all
> three without looking... Ah, why bother. Let's just add a group:
>
> Data Structures Reflection
> Array, Hash, OpenStruct, Module, Object, ObjectSpace
> Set, String, Struct
>
> Again, I'm sure I missed something but you get the idea.
>
> I realize that what I'm suggesting is not easily automated. For
> that reason, I've tried to come up what the simplest thing that I
> feel has potential to really ease access. Hopefully, maintaining a
> single page worth of categorized links would be pretty low
> maintenance. It only even needs to be checked for new Ruby version
> releases. (Isn't that yearly?) And I hope String will be safely
> snuggled in the Data Structures category for a few more releases. :)
James Edward Gray II