On Tue, Aug 01, 2000 at 08:26:22PM -0700, Tim Conrow wrote:
> My problem with X<> it is that it's disruptive to the readability of
> the text if it's embedded and used too much, as it might well be for
> indexing. I was trying to navigate a way around that problem.
I've been using X<> while writing (prose, not code) to mark up
keywords as I go, and I've made a few observations.
If you find yourself using X<> so much that its disrupting your
ability to read the raw POD, you're probably indexing far too many
words. Anything more than one or two X<>'s per paragraph is usually
too much, the produced index will be far too cluttered. Also, it is
not necessary to index every significant word every time it appears.
Index it at the location (or locations) which the topic is best
covered and dump the rest.
Any artificial list of keywords attached to a document, as you
originally suggested, is next to useless as it will probably not be
maintained for the same reasons which code and distant documentation
drift aparet. And will also not be a valid representation of the
actual text. Its the HTML <META> keyword syndrome. Whether
deliberately or on purpose, you will subtly lie about the contents of
your document to make it seem like there is more there.
However, you are perfectly welcome to do something like:
=for indexing
this,that,sex,Perl,Java,Natelie Portman
in your POD and then write a utility to pull this information out as
indexing info. Whether or not any of the other POD utilities will
recognize this is another question.
Something else which was mentioned that bothers me. X<> is a
zero-width text and won't be displayed??? Ack! I'd written on the
assumption that it would be displayed. Seemed very natural to me to
wrap X<> around keywords as I wrote them. Yes, we'll have to take
this up with the POD people.
--
Michael G Schwern http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Just Another Stupid Consultant Perl6 Kwalitee Ashuranse
Plus I remember being impressed with Ada because you could write an
infinite loop without a faked up condition. The idea being that in Ada
the typical infinite loop would be normally be terminated by detonation.
-- Larry Wall in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
