From: Brian Wisti <brian@...>
Date: 2003-02-23T23:39:55+09:00
Subject: Re: embedded docs

On Saturday 22 February 2003 01:06 pm, gabriele renzi wrote:
> il Sun, 23 Feb 2003 05:16:36 +0900, Brian Wisti
>
> <brian@coolnamehere.com> ha scritto::
> >Will ri (or some other doc browser) be available as part of the standard
> >distribution?
>
> I think it already is.
>
> Actually, I'm saying  that it is in the winInstaller, and I've got it
> in my linux boxes, but dunno how I got it there :)

I had to download and install ri myself on my Linux machine, but I'm not 
surprised that it is already included in some installations.  It is a nice 
tool, though.

>
> I'm not really used to perldoc.. but what -f does?
>
> It seems to me that it documents basic functions which don't fall in
> external modules.

Yes, exactly.  "perldoc -f eval" performs the same task as "ri eval".  You are 
right - some of the functionality I am describing is already available.

> I know that perldoc incorporates lots of stuff that is more about the
> whole language, while the ri philosophy is to document classes/methods
> that you could use.
>
> But maybe adding references to external docs could be useful, even if
> not incorporating them.

I can accept that ri has a narrower focus, and that it might not be a good 
idea to make ri do things it was not built for.  I would still like to see as 
much documentation as possible included with the Ruby distribution.  It can 
be enlightening to browse a random Perldoc item, and that sort of random 
enlightenment would be nice in other languages, also :-)

-Brian W

-- 
brian at coolnamehere dot com
http://coolnamehere.com