Here's a first shot written for Mozilla (tested on win98). The code is poorely written and need to be improved a lot to be efficient.
Try typing "z" : the first call to the function is slow (as it seeks in the whole function array) but we can divide the func_list array to 26 array (funcs_a, funcs_b, etc..). The matches are displayed on the textarea and saved in a temporary array. This is the array used by the next calls to reduce the search time.
I'm at work so I can't play too much with this right now, but I'll continue if nobody else does.
Mehdi
Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
Hi!
I have this idea for quite a long time now, but have not had the time to actually propose it :) So read on...
Today if you would like to use the quickref functionality, you either use the URL shortcuts or use the form on the site. If you use the form on the site, you get to the search page, which looks for files named with a similar pattern to what you searched for (prefixing your input with common prefixes). You need to wait for the request to end, and if you mistyped something, you need to start over again (or click on one of the closest matches found, if any).
What if we would provide the quickref as a flash file available on all pages (at the top above the menu or just on manual pages at the top of the sidebar)? This flash file would have an internal list of functions (or better a list of those pages you can look up with the quickref search). Typing in would display a list of the closest matches as you type, so in case you make a typo, you can correct it right away. Once you found the function you are looking for you can get to its manual page with a press of the enter or a click.
This saves our servers at least one search request (though the quickrefs now run through some redirection, so cause more requests), and would be more convinient for those having the plugin installed. I would assume that the SWF will be cached on the user's machine.
The only trick is that the function list should be embeded in the SWF somehow, as if it would download a list_of_functions.txt or whatever from our server, then we would not gain anything. But that needs to be modifiable from time to time, so we need to generate the data part of the source of the SWF somehow, and compile it with PHP :)
If this seems to be a good proposal, and is implementable, then I have an idea to further enhance it in the future. We can put in the proto of the functions (for which many developers look for many times), so we can display the proto without any further request. This would ease the life of our users.
I have no time to allocate for this stuff, and I lack the know-how of SWF generation in PHP, so I would like to only propose the idea, in case someone have time to pick it up, and it seems to be acceptable for the PHP site.
Goba
