> > Yes, 'so called "stable"' would be the word, since I'll probably need to
> > supply patches when new manuals come out. I'd kinda thought, why add
> > the howemany megs to this app and burn up more bandwidth? However, you
> > do have a good point. As it stands, it now just scrapes the
> > downloadable multi-page html manual and seems to do a good enough job at
> > it, it seems, I'll just have to offer the version of the manual I now
> > have if there are any formatting changes, or else offer a patch.
> >
> > The question is about these directory names (which are sort of like the
> > function family or category): nowhere do docs imply that these are any
> > more than just directory names that can change from one copy of the
> > manual to the next. However, they're pretty good as they stand as
> > reference names most of them are also used in many function names, so I
> > suppose they're considered somewhat stable. Question is basically: are
> > they stable, yes or no? could they be made or declared stable if this
> > hasn't really been though out before? E.g., functions in the chapter
> > title 'Ingres II' are in the directory 'ingres' - this is nice, doesn't
> > have any confusing spaces in it, suppose Mr. Ingres marries Ms. Cohen
> > and changes his db name to Ingres-Cohen PowerDB, the "normal language"
> > name of the category would change while the reference name ('ingres')
> > would stay the same.
>
> Files are named after function names. Whether function names will change
> is not up to the documentation team. We just follow the PHP function
> name changes. The development team tries to ensure backward
> compaitbility as much as possible, so widely used extensions will not
> change their function names for sure. PECL extensions are different
> beasts however...
Why don't you use these files?
http://cvs.php.net/phpdoc/funcindex.xml
funclist.txt
funcsummary.txt
The text files are organized by extension. Sure these files
aren't always up date but they could be. Also, I'm sure
genfuncsummary.php (inside phpdoc/scripts/) could be be
modified to output a more descriptive version of
funcindex.xml that could include extension, version info,
summary, and prototype. Since this is all generated from the
sources, marriages between Ms. Cohen and Mr. Ingres
shouldn't be a problem. Regarding a description field,
that's another story but I'm sure this is also possible
considering all function files follow strict naming
guidelines, and reftitles now exist.
Regards,
Philip
