From: Dave Thomas <dave@...>
Date: 2003-01-27T23:42:58+09:00
Subject: Re: My last word on aliases ;)

Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> [You may have seen this on -talk.  I posted it there by misake.  Sorry
> about that.  Here it is anyway.]
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> Fair enough, you don't want to group aliases before their target, but
> when I view the RDoc for a large module like FileUtils, it's a bit
> of a forest/trees scenario.  The basic problem is, the aliases aren't
> important enough to justify the amount of screen real-estate they
> occupy, and the fact that they are presented just like methods makes
> it difficult to subconciously locate the important information on the
> screen.
> 
> Therefore, I think aliases should be presented along these lines:
>   * method name distinguished: grey and italic or something
>   * target of alias on the same line as method name
>   * an arrow or something instead of text ("Alias for")

Ah - now I see what you're thinking, and why there's a disconnect.

As a programmer of a module, I agree: aliases are somewhat peripheral.

But I see RDoc as a tool for the _user_ of a module. For these folks, 
aliases are every bit as important as the original method. For example, 
which is the alias, Enumerable#find_all or #select? I frankly couldn't 
tell you without looking it up, and from my perspective (as a user) I 
don't really care. Some folks will prefer one method name, some the 
other, but both are used _as if they were the method_. For that reason I 
believe aliases deserve equal billing in the RDoc output.


Cheers


Dave