I know this is a bit off of the "IDE" question path, but I have to add
another $0.02 to the mix.
The best way to find information for myself has always been the Index,
whether in a book or online material. A well-compiled index often
includes entries of high-level concepts with sub-indexes for specific
areas within the high-level context. You might find an index entry
under "Themes" with sub-entries below it for "Built-in Themes",
"Configuration", "Custom Themes", "Overview", "Source Files", etc. An
index can be useful or useless, depending on how well it's constructed.
That being said, I have to add that I aced my college Economics final
exam many, many years ago because it was "open book", and I spent those
2 hours jumping from the Index to specific pages in the book to find the
exam answers. It cemented my fondness for using a book's Index. I
usually ignore any Table of Contents and go right to the back of any
good reference book, even when I know the contents of the book. It's by
far the easiest way to find reference material for me. Also, I do a
fair amount of Oracle database development, and their documentation
provides an excellent example of how you can use the Index to find
suitable information amongst a Gigabyte or more of documentation.
I daresay that a good Qooxdoo documentation index would supplant much of
the discussion on this mailing list. ;-)
Gene
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 09:53 +0200, thron7 wrote:
> > That's interesting... I am definitely "old-fashioned" in this respect. The
> > difference between "search" and "sort" is for me that with the "sort"
> > someone already put some time into trying to put some sense into
> > unstructured information. For example, with an index, someone already tried
> > to group the really relevant information together, guiding you to the heart
> > of the matter rather than to some useless location where a term is
> > mentioned. The same with a table of contents. That's why people still buy
> > books (I would by a qooxdoo book, BTW ;-) ). The "search" strategy, which I
> > use myself a lot, means that you are doing the categorization work again and
> > again, for each little piece of information that you're after, with less
> > knowledge than the one who would be designing the "sort" strategy. "Search",
> > for me, is always a fallback strategy that is much less efficient.
>
> Nicely put. For me, I'm far less a "words" person. If I search for
> something it's usually much harder for me to come up with a search term
> (a word), rather than a "location" where it is likely to be found. I
> remember the "places" where I saw things, rather than the words
> expressing them. Therefore, structure, context and paths are more
> critical to me than clever search facilities.
>
> Thomas
>
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