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 X-Sender: eliz AT is To: "Peter J. Farley III" 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: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 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 Precedence: bulk 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 ;-).