first of all, this idea is fantastic. however, i think it would be made
better if a standard doccumentation format was also agreed upon. to me, this
choice is very simple: html is the only doc format that will easily work on
mac, windows, and *nix. rdoc is the best of the html doc generators. ergo,
rdoc wins my vote. personally, i prefer man pages but…
IMHO, it would be very, very, very, cool if, for example, each package had it’s own
rdoc directory which lived along_side the package in site_ruby
this would allow, for example, one to do this:
netscape file:/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/package/rdoc/index.html
to see the docs for ‘package’
furthermore, rdoc could be generated for docs for ALL of a site_ruby dir,
allowing one to
netscape file:/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rdoc
to see the rdocs for EVERY INSTALLED COMPONENT on your system. this could be
super cool.
for all you java developers out there you will see where i am going with this,
if rubyists could agree on a place and format for docs pages could be
generated to doccument
a) all the ruby internal classes
b) all the installed classes on your system (combined)
c) all the installed classes on your system (individually)
if you use the pickaxe html page ‘Built-in Classes and Methods’, as i do, as
java programmers use the javadoc api pages - you will appreciate where i’m
going with this. imaging that there was also a ‘Site-Ruby Classes and
Methods’ page, and how that would help prgrammers jump into the ruby language.
my two cents.
-a
···
On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
Hi,
In message “[RCR] Include CONFIG::Config[‘rubydocdir’] in rbconfig.rb” > on 03/10/01, Gavin Sinclair gsinclair@soyabean.com.au writes:
Summary: if Ruby had a standard documentation directory, then
installers could install documentation there. A typical Ruby
installation does contain documentation in a sensible place, but this
location is not retrievable through the normal Config[‘xyz’]
mechanism.
Currently it does not have one. Where do you think it should be, if
Ruby should have a standard documentation directory. And how far
should it cover? Libraries? Applications?
====================================
Ara Howard
NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory
Information and Technology Services
Data Systems Group
R/FST 325 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80305-3328
Email: ara.t.howard@noaa.gov
Phone: 303-497-7238
Fax: 303-497-7259
The difference between art and science is that science is what we understand
well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else.
– Donald Knuth, “Discover”
~ > /bin/sh -c ‘for lang in ruby perl; do $lang -e “print "\x3a\x2d\x29\x0a"”; done’
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