On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Raymond S Brand wrote:

> Who should the docs be optimal for? The "first time user" or the "regular 
> user"?
> I do not believe that the answer should be for the "first time user"; after 
> all,
> they probably want/need a tutorial, not the reference manual.
> 
> Yes, with the, currently, small number of modules, it's easy enough to just 
> look
> through the list to find the module you need but what happens when the number 
> of
> modules is not so small. Don't assume that all browsers have reasonable search
> facilities.
> 
> If this index is going to go into the docs, then I suggest that it and the 
> existing
> alphabetical module list both have links from the "top" index page. And to be
> complete, you should also create another directive index that categorizes the
> individual directives like you did the modules, and link the two directive
> indexes off the "top" index page.

Whatever.  I gave my opinion, but I don't have strong feelings either way.  
The main reason I did not retain the alphabetic index in my patch is that
I was trying to limit future maintenance work.

Re the Directives index, I also thought about that.  My opinion is that it
would be very difficult to do a good job of it. Besides, by categorizing
the modules page you already get most of the way there, since the modules
themselves each index the directives that they contain.  The only real
exception is the core "module" which contains a bunch of relatively
unrelated directives.  It would probably be useful to add a categorized
index inside mod/core.html.  Maybe I will do that someday if my patches
are ever committed ;-)

-- 
Joshua Slive
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://finance.commerce.ubc.ca/~slive/
Phone: (604) 822-1871


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