From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2008-02-19T01:45:09+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc.

James Gray wrote:

> 
> We had so many bug reports on TextMate's documentation command when we 
> used ri.  We later switched to qri (part of FastRI) and added some 
> documentation about how to install it.  Our bug reports are practically 
> gone now.  When we do see one, we point them at the install 
> documentation and it solves their problem.
> 
> I really don't understand why we don't toss RI in the standard library 
> and replace it with the FastRI code.  It's RI with more features, it's 
> faster, oh and it works.  What's the downside exactly?

I'm curious if drbrain is planning any changes to rdoc that would change 
how ri might behave differently.

One of my complaints with the current ri/rdoc situation is how elective 
module mixins get pushed into various class docs by default.  For 
example, looking up String, I see that strings have a to_yaml method. 
Except, of course, they don't unless you explicitly include the YAML module.

ri and rdoc are brain-dead with regard to dynamic class composition.

fri has the exact same behavior (since it's using the same broken 
datastore as ri)

It gets worse as more gems are installed if they do any base class 
alterations.  (f)ri tells me that strings have a "_expand_ch" method. I 
have no idea where that even comes from.




-- 
James Britt

"Serious engineering is only a few thousand years old. Our attempts at
deliberately producing very complex robust systems are immature at best."
  - Gerald Jay Sussman