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Re: Poor State of the Man Pages

From:
Stas Bekman
Date:
December 1, 2003 13:40
Subject:
Re: Poor State of the Man Pages
Message ID:
3FCBB617.3070508@stason.org
Mark Jason Dominus wrote:
> I don't know if this will be interesting,
> but here's a note I've had in my PROJECTS file for several years:
> 
>         Make a permuted index for the Camel book.  Ask everyone on
>         clpm and p5p to open the book at random, enter a one-sentence
>         desription of something on the page, and mail it to me with a
>         page number.  If they send
> 
>                 Mapping from parentheses to backreference variables in regex match
> 
>         then make entries for
> 
>                 backreference variables in regex match, Mapping from parentheses to 
>                 Mapping from parentheses to backreference variables in regex match
>                 match, Mapping from parentheses to backreference variables in regex 
>                 parentheses to backreference variables in regex match, Mapping from 
>                 regex match, Mapping from parentheses to backreference variables in 
>                 variables in regex match, Mapping from parentheses to backreference 
> 
>         If a hundred people do this, it might be useful.  Then again
>         maybe not---but it's worth a try.
> 
>         20030907
> 
>         Get O'Reilly to give you an online copy of the Camel book.
>         Display a random page, and have the web user fill in a form
>         with the description.  That way you can (a) control the
>         randomization; (b) ensure that there's no duplication of
>         effort, and (c) collate the index automatically.
> 
> I didn't mention it in the note, but I should probably point out that
> displaying a single random page of a book is not going to give people
> an opportunity to steal the book.

Mark, another way to reach this is to use the brilliant idea used by the 
authors of the mod_perl cookbook. They have a full-text search capability on 
their site: http://modperlcookbook.org/cgi-bin/swish.cgi
You get to search the real book, and it gives you a short context and the page 
numbers in the book. e.g. searching for Apache::Registry:
http://modperlcookbook.org/cgi-bin/swish.cgi?query=Apache%3A%3ARegistry&submit=Search%21&sort=pageno

I've mentioned this idea to Nat, and hopefully we will see ora.com adding this 
feature to all ORA books. Next they may want to mix it with Safari.

__________________________________________________________________
Stas Bekman            JAm_pH ------> Just Another mod_perl Hacker
http://stason.org/     mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org
mailto:stas@stason.org http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com
http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org   http://ticketmaster.com




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