On 20.1.2005, at 15:34, James Britt wrote:

> Ilmari Heikkinen wrote:
>> Re: ruby-doc.org
>> Is there a way to access a class documentation at a certain method 
>> anchor with an url?
>> I'm not very clear, maybe this example will be clearer:
>> http://www.ruby-doc.org/find/Enumerable%23map
>> would go to Enumerable#map anchor on the Enumerable page. And it 
>> would have all the navigation frames there, so it's not a place to 
>> get stranded in.
>
>
> Not at the moment.  Those doc pages are generated from rdoc, and the 
> anchors to method names a re abstract strings, not the method names 
> themselves.  So you get this:
>
> http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Enumerable.html#M001864
>
> You need to know that M001864 is the 'map' method.

Yes, the way I see this, the issue can be worked around by either:
a) adding an extra degree of indirection (ie. search)
    - because there might be Class.new and Class#new, which one does 
Class.html#new go to?
    - Class.new -> find/Class.new, Class#new -> find/Class%23new

or b) adding extra structure to the anchor tags
   - Class.new -> Class.html#cm_new, Class#new -> Class.html#im_new

>> Reason I'm asking is that I'd like to open the ruby-doc doc page in a 
>> webbrowser with Enumerable.help:map. That is with the IHelp 
>> irb-ri-access library. Is this okay btw, or does it put too much 
>> burden on the site?
>
> Depends.  How often would there be requests, and by how many people? 
> Put another way, how does this differ from people viewing the pages 
> directly in a browser to help them while coding?

Would probably be less requests per person using context-help vs. using 
navigation:
* String.help:reverse goes directly to String.html
* Through navigation it's 3 requests (index, core api, string).

Of course, I can't know if it changes browsing habits (use help more 
because it's easy, thus generate more total requests.)

> I don't see a problem.  In general, I like the idea of serving up data 
> services for remote applications, though in practice I would have to 
> see how the bandwidth goes if ruby-doc had a more direct Web API for 
> accessing documentation.  (Though the data format should be something 
> other than HTML 4.)

Another way would be to generate and use local static doc package. I 
think I'll have to add support for that too.. it'd lose the possible 
community aspect, but gain off-line capability.

> No, I think I understand. It is a problem that one cannot easily 
> locate and/or bookmark specific methods and classes.  The framed view 
> of the docs is handy for certain things, but not others.  And allowing 
> comments on the docs would be sweet.

Yes, exactly.


--
Ilmari Heikkinen