[erlang-questions] Erlang documentation cleanup (PREV: R13B01 modules, quick reference)

[Dave Pawson]

Lots of acronyms there Richard?


2009/8/12 Richard O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED>:
> I'd just like to say that comparing the Erlang on-line
> documentation with typical JavaDoc -- including stuff
> from Sun -- makes me pathetically grateful for Erlang.

I'm certainly not complaining about it.
My 2 cents worth, for a newcomer to X, the documentation
is as important if not more so than X.

>
> I keep on pointing people at the R documentation for
> a great example.

Is that a module? An application? Any URL please.




> By the way, using information retrieval engines (locally)
> is a FINE way to navigate manuals.  A few years ago our
> 3rd-year software engineering students were given as their
> project to write FTFM "Find The F* Manual", doing just this
> with the Linux man pages.  Once they had done it. they found
> it very useful.

Could you give a thumbnail of FTFM please? What is it
trying to find? Documentation on function X or
'something to give me http access in Erlang' etc?


>
> We have our own research IR engine (it changes all the time,
> and students frequently break it, so don't ask).  I've heard
> people speak well of ht://Dig (http://htdig.sourceforge.net/).
> It hasn't been updated for a while, but there are other free
> engines out there, like Zettair.

Searching on plain text or ... specially formatted content?
Lucene class of application?
htdig sounds not dissimilar to Lucene.

>
> The Erlang man pages are about 5 MB of lightly marked up text.
> The HTML pages are about 31 MB.  They include more documents
> and are more verbosely marked up.  By the standards of IR,
> these document collections are *tiny*.

Yes, but so far I'm finding the content quite hard to present
in a comprehensive way without becoming cumbersome.
  Working with them is easy. They are generally well marked
up.

regards





-- 
Dave Pawson
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