X-Authentication-Warning:	delorie.com: mailnull set sender to djgpp-workers-bounces using -f
Date:	Sun, 3 Mar 2002 13:29:53 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender:	eliz AT is
To:	"Peter J. Farley III" <pjfarley AT dorsai DOT org>
cc:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Restructured dir.txi -- please review and comment
In-Reply-To:	<5.1.0.14.2.20020302205747.02749500@mail.dorsai.org>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.1020303132933.705D-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0
Reply-To:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Errors-To:	nobody AT delorie DOT com
X-Mailing-List:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
X-Unsubscribes-To:	listserv AT delorie DOT com

On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Peter J. Farley III wrote:

> The problem is that FOOb.zip as a section name does not tell me 
> anything about what it is the programs in that package do.

We could add some info in parentheses, like this:

  From gccNNNb.zip (The GNU Compiler Collection):

>  >Well, can you explain what help do you need, and how does the current
>  >shape of DIR prevent you from finding the info?
> 
> The problem is that the organization of the sections fails to enable 
> info users to find a utility whose name they do not know, much less 
> which package it might be contained in.  I believe that a set of 
> categorical sections, in *addition* to an alphabetical section for 
> those who know the name already, is an invaluable aid when one consults 
> info to *find* the utility to accomplish a task.
> 
> As I have been writing this reply, I realized that what I think I would 
> like to see would be something that "/info/dir" is not intended to be 
> in its current incarnation

Exactly.  DIR is just a menu; menus in Info are not supposed to be
used for searching the docs efficiently.

Did you ever try "info --apropos SUBJECT"?  It's a bit slow, but
that's the way you are supposed to look for solutions to problems for
which you don't know what packages deal with them.

> In the interim, if it will help you more, I can just "fix up" the 
> current dir.txi with some text re-arrangement.

There's no rush, so I'm hesitatnt to ask you to do something that
might be thrown away.  I think it's best to decide what we want first,
and only then invest the effort to do it.

> In particular, the 
> fileutils, shellutils and textutils sections can and probably should be 
> positioned *before* the "Miscellaneous" section.

"Miscellaneous" should go last, by its very definition: it includes
everything that doesn't have a better classification.  We should make
sure that no important packages end up there, though; if they do, it's
probably a sign that our classification needs work ;-).

- Raw text -