From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.xemacs.design,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: INFO on add-ons Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 06:46:08 +0200 (IST) Sender: xemacs-design-admin@xemacs.org Message-ID: References: <20020904133435.GA21972@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1031201253 1631 127.0.0.1 (5 Sep 2002 04:47:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 04:47:33 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, xemacs-design@xemacs.org Return-path: Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org ([207.96.1.200]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17moYF-0000Q9-00 for ; Thu, 05 Sep 2002 06:47:32 +0200 Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA22864; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 00:49:02 -0400 Original-Received: (from turnbull@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) id AAA20208 for xemacs-design-mailman@xemacs.org; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 00:48:48 -0400 Original-Received: (from mail@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) id AAA20174 for turnbull@tux.org; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 00:48:48 -0400 Original-Received: from is.elta.co.il (is.elta.co.il [199.203.121.2]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA19939 for ; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 00:48:47 -0400 Original-Received: from is (is [199.203.121.2]) by is.elta.co.il (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id GAA10495; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 06:46:08 +0200 (IST) X-Sender: eliz@is Original-To: Miles Bader In-Reply-To: <20020904133435.GA21972@gnu.org> X-XEmacs-List: design Errors-To: xemacs-design-admin@xemacs.org X-BeenThere: xemacs-design@xemacs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.1 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Discussion of design and features for XEmacs. List-Unsubscribe: , Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.xemacs.design:1409 gmane.emacs.devel:7513 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:7513 On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Miles Bader wrote: > In any case, I think you're overemphasizing the importance and difficulty of > indexing just a wee bit; after all, programming reference documentation is > different in many ways than documents in general (it's much more regular, for > one thing), and the _most_ important index entries (the commands and > functions being documented) probably _can_ be generated automatically. I think good indices are extremely important. Without them, a large manual cannot be efficiently used as a reference, since text-based search is too limited, especially when the subject string you look for is not included verbatim in the text. In my experience, indexing functions, commands, and variables, while important, is not enough to have a good index. You need a good concept index where users can look up subjects that are not in the text. As an example, consider an index item "cut and paste" in the Emacs manual.