Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-11 Thread Jules Bean

Andrew Coppin wrote:
OTOH, I recently discovered that GHCi has the ability to show you what's 
defined in a given module without me having to wait 40 seconds for 
Firefox to start... Shame you can't scroll its output. (And still no 
help if you're not sure of the module name.)


!!!

Run ghci in an environment with a scroll buffer then? Like a 
non-braindead terminal application, or emacs? (The latter even gives you 
convenient reverse-incremental-search to search through the info you 
just printed)


Jules
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-11 Thread Adrian Hey

Jules Bean wrote:

Andrew Coppin wrote:
OTOH, I recently discovered that GHCi has the ability to show you 
what's defined in a given module without me having to wait 40 seconds 
for Firefox to start... Shame you can't scroll its output. (And still 
no help if you're not sure of the module name.)


!!!

Run ghci in an environment with a scroll buffer then? Like a 
non-braindead terminal application, or emacs? (The latter even gives you 
convenient reverse-incremental-search to search through the info you 
just printed)


I don't know if Andrew is a windows user, but if so he might not be
aware that even with the (otherwise braindead) command window the
number of lines buffered is a configurable property (on WinXP at least).
I have it set to 1000 lines.

The other thing I've found that makes the use of command line tools
a lot less painful than it would otherwise be in windows is the
Open Command Window Here Power Toy..

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

It's still nowhere near as good as the old XTree though :-(

Regards
--
Adrian Hey




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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Sven Panne
On Sunday 09 September 2007 18:41, Andrew Coppin wrote:
 [...]
 Well, if I could collapse it with a single click, it would be much
 easier to scroll past it and get to the thing I'm looking for. I didn't
 say remove it, just give me the option to hide it. ;-)

OK, that shouldn't be too hard to implement.

 Oh goodie... So it's there to keep the machines happy?

No, it's there to keep *me* happy when I'm looking for a module. ;-)

 It's just tedious that every single time I load up this page, I have to
 spend 30 seconds manually collapsing everything so I can get to the
 module I actually want to look at. (The alternative is to manually
 scroll the 13-page list my hand. Not very funny...)

I still fail to understand why you have to scroll or collapse manually, every 
browser I know of has a search facility. And there is the index page, where 
you have an incremental search facility even when your poor browser (guess 
which one I mean? :-) doesn't have it, at least when the index has been 
generated by a recent Haddock.

 OK, so... can we add a pair of expand all/collapse all buttons then?

Again, this should be rather easy to add.

Cheers,
   S.
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread manu

Neil Mitchell wrotes :

Replicating actual tables with CSS is a nightmare - you shouldn't use
table's for lots of things,


I agree


but there are sometimes when it really is
the best option.


Which isn't the case here !
Nested lists would easily do the trick...


Fixing up the CSS and still keeping tables is a
perfectly valid option.


yes it's true...


E.D




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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Brent Yorgey
 Just bookmark: http://haskell.org/hoogle

 It's not perfect, but it probably solves lots of your problems.


And if you use Firefox, you can even install Hoogle as one of the search
engines in the upper-right search box.  Nice and fast!

-Brent
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Andrew Coppin

Sven Panne wrote:

On Sunday 09 September 2007 18:41, Andrew Coppin wrote:
  
  

Oh goodie... So it's there to keep the machines happy?



No, it's there to keep *me* happy when I'm looking for a module. ;-)
  


Well, there's over 200 modules relating to graph theory alone. (Modules 
that I will never ever need, since I don't even know what graph theory 
*is*...) There's also a few hundred OpenGL modules - which I won't be 
looking at unless I specifically want to do something with OpenGL... In 
summary, it's probably quicker to be able to just expand the ones I want 
to look at, rather than collapse the ones I don't want to look at. 
(Works for Windows Explorer and the file system, eh?)


I still fail to understand why you have to scroll or collapse manually, every 
browser I know of has a search facility. And there is the index page, where 
you have an incremental search facility even when your poor browser (guess 
which one I mean? :-) doesn't have it, at least when the index has been 
generated by a recent Haddock.
  


I dislike searches. When all the categories are collapsed, they fit onto 
a single page. The hierachy is sufficiently shallow that from there you 
can instantly get to any module. And if you can't remember the exact 
name of the module, searches are useless but you can probably find it 
visually in a few clicks.


OTOH, I recently discovered that GHCi has the ability to show you what's 
defined in a given module without me having to wait 40 seconds for 
Firefox to start... Shame you can't scroll its output. (And still no 
help if you're not sure of the module name.)


If you're really stuck, there's always Hoogle. Assuming you can guess 
either the likely function name or the correct order and type of its 
arguments... (And on occasion it has a habit of not showing the function 
you're looking for, or just showing it very far down the list, even 
though the type signature *exactly* matches what you typed... but 
usually it's quite good.)


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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Andrew Coppin

Brent Yorgey wrote:
And if you use Firefox, you can even install Hoogle as one of the 
search engines in the upper-right search box.  Nice and fast!


I've never really understood what the benefit of this is... I mean, 
Google make the Google toolbar, but what's the point? Why not just 
click on the Google bookmark and type in your search? What benefits does 
installing a special addon provide?


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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Ian Lynagh
On Sun, Sep 09, 2007 at 05:38:03PM +0200, Sven Panne wrote:
 On Sunday 09 September 2007 16:40, Andrew Coppin wrote:
  I have the following page bookmarked:
 
http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/
 
  I'd like to ask 2 things.
 
  1. Would it be possible to make the *huge* list of package names at the
  top collapsable? (That way I don't have to scroll through several pages
  of uninteresting text to get to the bit I actually want.)
 
 What do you mean exactly with the *huge* list of package names? The 
 description list with the short textual descriptions of each package?

It's about a fifth of the page, I think, and it'll get larger
percentagewise as base breaks up more.

Also, on Debian systems, we add all installed libraries to this index,
so it gets even larger.

 I'd say 
 that this list is highly interesting to people unfamiliar with the package 
 structure, so it is good that it is there.

Is that really helpful? There isn't a mapping from package name to
modules, so I'm not sure what it buys you. I'm sure I've never looked at
it.

I'm interested in other opinions on this, as I planned to remove the
list from the Debian packages.

Would it be better to have a separate page with a package index,
containing the description of each package and a link to each of the
modules that it provides?


Thanks
Ian

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Thomas Schilling
On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 20:28 +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote:

 Would it be better to have a separate page with a package index,
 containing the description of each package and a link to each of the
 modules that it provides?

+1

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Thomas Schilling
On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 19:51 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote:
 Brent Yorgey wrote:
  And if you use Firefox, you can even install Hoogle as one of the 
  search engines in the upper-right search box.  Nice and fast!
 
 I've never really understood what the benefit of this is... I mean, 
 Google make the Google toolbar, but what's the point? Why not just 
 click on the Google bookmark and type in your search? What benefits does 
 installing a special addon provide?

Well, for the default Google searchbox the advantage is:

  Ctrl-K search phrase ENTER

versus

  grab mouse .. point ... click ... move hand back to keyboard ... type
search phrase, ENTER

I never used any of the secondary search bars.  Unless I can define a
shortcut to access hoogle quickly there's no advantage.


However, regarding the modules list.  I think it should be easy to have
optional javascript functionality to toggle the visibility of the module
tree.  The default visibility could be customized using a cookie.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Neil Mitchell
Hi

  I've never really understood what the benefit of this is... I mean,
  Google make the Google toolbar, but what's the point? Why not just
  click on the Google bookmark and type in your search? What benefits does
  installing a special addon provide?

You can setup firefox so in the location bar (Alt+D) typing h query
(without the quotes) will perform a hoogle query. Simply right click
in the search box and click add keyword search with h as the
keyword. You can also do the same for Google, which I've been using
for years (Opera 5 had this feature!)

re: Hoogle not always getting it exactly right, there are a few known
bugs floating around which I'm working on. Hoogle can permute the
order of arguments though, so that shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't
really like Monads, but I wrote Hoogle before I was aware of
higher-kinded type classes, so its understandable...

Thanks

Neil
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Brent Yorgey
 Well, for the default Google searchbox the advantage is:

   Ctrl-K search phrase ENTER

 versus

   grab mouse .. point ... click ... move hand back to keyboard ... type
 search phrase, ENTER

 I never used any of the secondary search bars.  Unless I can define a
 shortcut to access hoogle quickly there's no advantage.


To search Hoogle I just type  Ctrl-K F4 h search phrase ENTER.  Once
you're in the search box, F4 (or alt-up/alt-down) let you select a
particular search engine.

-Brent
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-10 Thread Andrew Coppin

Neil Mitchell wrote:

Hi

re: Hoogle not always getting it exactly right, there are a few known
bugs floating around which I'm working on. Hoogle can permute the
order of arguments though, so that shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't
really like Monads, but I wrote Hoogle before I was aware of
higher-kinded type classes, so its understandable...
  


Overall, I think Hoogle is an increadibly neat tool. I've never seen 
anything else like it. (But then, how many other languages let you 
virtually figure out what a function does just by its type signature?)


I shudder to think what Hoogle will be like if they ever get round to 
adding MPTCs, ATs, rank-Ns and existential types to the language 
standard... Good luck with searching for that! ;-)


OOC, how big is Hoogle and how long did it take to do?

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[Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-09 Thread Andrew Coppin

I have the following page bookmarked:

 http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/

I'd like to ask 2 things.

1. Would it be possible to make the *huge* list of package names at the 
top collapsable? (That way I don't have to scroll through several pages 
of uninteresting text to get to the bit I actually want.)


2. Could we make is so all items are collapsed initially? (Currently 
they're all expended initially - which makes it take rather a long time 
to find anything.)


Just thought I'd ask...

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-09 Thread Johan Tibell
I agree about the top part. It's not very interesting, especially not
in a document used as a reference. Perhaps we could move it to the end
and provide an anchor link from the different modules down to their
package explanation.

A tip is to use Firefox's search as you type feature if you know the
module name.

Cheers,

Johan

On 9/9/07, Andrew Coppin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I have the following page bookmarked:

   http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/

 I'd like to ask 2 things.

 1. Would it be possible to make the *huge* list of package names at the
 top collapsable? (That way I don't have to scroll through several pages
 of uninteresting text to get to the bit I actually want.)

 2. Could we make is so all items are collapsed initially? (Currently
 they're all expended initially - which makes it take rather a long time
 to find anything.)

 Just thought I'd ask...

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-09 Thread Sven Panne
On Sunday 09 September 2007 16:40, Andrew Coppin wrote:
 I have the following page bookmarked:

   http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/

 I'd like to ask 2 things.

 1. Would it be possible to make the *huge* list of package names at the
 top collapsable? (That way I don't have to scroll through several pages
 of uninteresting text to get to the bit I actually want.)

What do you mean exactly with the *huge* list of package names? The 
description list with the short textual descriptions of each package? I'd say 
that this list is highly interesting to people unfamiliar with the package 
structure, so it is good that it is there.

 2. Could we make is so all items are collapsed initially? (Currently
 they're all expended initially - which makes it take rather a long time
 to find anything.)

Again this depends on the use case: I'd vote strongly against collapsing the 
list initially, because that way the incremental search in Firefox won't work 
without un-collapsing everything.

When the index is generated with a more recent Haddock, you get a search 
field, which does an incremental search, so this might perhaps be more what 
you are looking for.

A more aesthetical note: We should really get rid of the ugly table/CSS layout 
mixture, the lower part of the page renders a bit ugly and varies between 
browsers. Switching to pure CSS should be safe in 2007, I guess.

Cheers,
   S.
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-09 Thread Andrew Coppin

Sven Panne wrote:

On Sunday 09 September 2007 16:40, Andrew Coppin wrote:
  

1. Would it be possible to make the *huge* list of package names at the
top collapsable? (That way I don't have to scroll through several pages
of uninteresting text to get to the bit I actually want.)



What do you mean exactly with the *huge* list of package names? The 
description list with the short textual descriptions of each package? I'd say 
that this list is highly interesting to people unfamiliar with the package 
structure, so it is good that it is there.
  


Well, if I could collapse it with a single click, it would be much 
easier to scroll past it and get to the thing I'm looking for. I didn't 
say remove it, just give me the option to hide it. ;-)



2. Could we make is so all items are collapsed initially? (Currently
they're all expended initially - which makes it take rather a long time
to find anything.)



Again this depends on the use case: I'd vote strongly against collapsing the 
list initially, because that way the incremental search in Firefox won't work 
without un-collapsing everything.
  


Oh goodie... So it's there to keep the machines happy?

It's just tedious that every single time I load up this page, I have to 
spend 30 seconds manually collapsing everything so I can get to the 
module I actually want to look at. (The alternative is to manually 
scroll the 13-page list my hand. Not very funny...)


OK, so... can we add a pair of expand all/collapse all buttons then?

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tiny documentation request

2007-09-09 Thread Neil Mitchell
Hi

 I have the following page bookmarked:

   http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/

Just bookmark: http://haskell.org/hoogle

It's not perfect, but it probably solves lots of your problems.

 A tip is to use Firefox's search as you type feature if you know the
 module name.

This will be better supported in Hoogle 4 - but unfortunately degrees
etc. are coming in the way of Hoogle development...

 A more aesthetical note: We should really get rid of the ugly table/CSS layout
 mixture, the lower part of the page renders a bit ugly and varies between
 browsers. Switching to pure CSS should be safe in 2007, I guess.

Replicating actual tables with CSS is a nightmare - you shouldn't use
table's for lots of things, but there are sometimes when it really is
the best option. Fixing up the CSS and still keeping tables is a
perfectly valid option.

Thanks

Neil
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