Have I said "You Rock" lately?

-rich

BTW:  Couldn't you/someone just write an XSLT file to transform the XML
output to ri format?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dave / thomases.com [mailto:dave / thomases.com] On Behalf Of Dave
> Thomas
> Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 6:24 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: ri question
> 
> "Philip Mateescu" <philip / dynasty.com> writes:
> 
> > However, that still doesn't respond to my question ... (sorry to bug
> > you with this, I'm just curious about the way Ruby tools evolve).
> 
> OK, here's the plan.
> 
> RDoc can handle C and Ruby files, currently producing HTML and XML
> documentation from them.
> 
> The plan is:
> 
> 1. Enhance RDoc to generate ri-compatible output (and add support to
>    the C parsing for a couple of facilities used in the interpreter).
> 
> 2. Take the existing documentation from the reference section of
>    Programming Ruby and munge it into RDoc format.
> 
> 3. Matz has given us permission to insert this RDoc documentation into
>    the Ruby source files (both of the interpreter and of the library
>    files that come with it). When we're ready, we'll coordinate a
>    small army of volunteers, and everyone gets to edit the Ruby
>    distribution to insert RDoc comments in the correct places. Details
>    of this haven't been worked out, so please don't volunteer just
>    yet :)
> 
> 4. We'll check all the annotated source back in to ruby-lang.org.
> 
> 5. From then on, all documentation of the libraries and builtins that
>    come with Ruby will be generated from the Ruby source itself. RDoc
>    will generate it in HTML, CHM, XML, RDF, and ri format, and in
>    LaTeX for printing.
> 
> 6. When people add new functions to the interpreter, or change
>    existing functions, the documentation is right there in a comment
>    block next to the C method, so hopefully they'll make whatever
>    minor changes are needed (one of the reasons that RDoc markup is
>    lightweight is to make it easy to to this). This means that the
>    documentation will _always_ be up-to-date, and up-to-date in all
>    formats, from ri to HTML to ...  If anyone ever wants to write a
>    Ruby book that has a reference section for this material (including
>    any updated PickAxe), they'll be able to cull it from the latest
>    sources.
> 
> 7. Phase two of the plan is to have RDoc create a local database on
>    each user's machine of documentation for _every_ Ruby module,
>    library, etc on that machine. When something new is downloaded, its
>    documentation will be incorporated into the hyperlinked whole. If a
>    user or library developer writes a class that subclasses Hash, then
>    you'll be able to click on 'Hash' in that class's documentation and
>    be hyperlinked to the interpreter's Hash class documentation. This
>    latter stuff is slightly further away.
> 
> 
> Anyway, that's the plan. Just add time and stir.
> 
> 
> Dave