Mail Archives: djgpp-workers/2003/01/02/01:16:10
On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 ams AT ludd DOT luth DOT se wrote:
> While looking in the infomanual of libc I'd like to be able to hit "i"
> and the start of a function name and <TAB> to be able to move around
> quickly between functions. (Today I have to go to the alphabetical
> index and scroll down or search for the function.)
TAB completion works in menus as well, IIRC. Just press `m', the
beginning of the function's name, and hit TAB.
> Is that supposed to work and something broke?
The libc manual was never indexed. It was assumed that, since the
top-level menu is actually an alphabetic list very similar to an index,
the index itself was unnecessary.
IMHO, we do need an index (see below for some good reasons), but I never
had time to sit down and add the index entries. If nothing else, the
lack of an index fails some documentation commands in Emacs which need an
index to glean the information.
If someone wants to work on indexing the library reference, here are
some random thoughts:
- mkdoc.cc could add the trivial entries ("@findex foo" for each
function `foo') automatically.
- We need @vindex entries for all the environment variables mentioned
in the library reference; these should be done manually (they aren't
a lot).
- @cindex entries for important concepts is where most of the manual
labor is. But it's also where the significant add-on value of the
indexing is, so it'd be a Good Thing if we had that.
> Or what is necessary to enable this?
As the example of the single index entry shows, it's enabled by default.
But makeinfo won't generate an index without those @findex and @cindex
entries, and you also need a @printindex directive at the right place.
See the Texinfo manual for details.
- Raw text -