'386 Unix Wars

[Jeff Liebermann]

dhesi%cirrusl at oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>In <1990Dec23.160807.3207 at virtech.uucp> cpcahil at virtech.uucp (Conor P.
>Cahill) writes:

>>You go on and on about how bad the permuted index is...

>Maybe I'm looking at the wrong UNIX derivative, but:
>(a) There is no such thing as *the* permuted index;  there are many of
>them, and the user's first challenge is to find the right one.  Also,

Great.  Now we have the "index wars".  Think of the permuted
index as a crude form of what is now called hypertext (or
give me a word, and I'll give you a clue).  Since the number
and size of the manuals, documents, updates, release notes,
tutorials, user guides, references, and such tend to grow
linearly with code size, the days of the PRINTED index are
numbered.  Documentation is no longer released with the software,
but staggered to meet the realities of printing schedules.
A printed permuted index is usually obsolete when the first
release notes, updates, and bug fixed arrive.

The answer to this problem is in front of your face.  The
index should be on-line.  One should be able to type a keyword
and some database should belch the document name, current
version, and page references.  My illusions are a hypertext
like indexer with context sensitive suggestions.  The final
output should be either a man page or a manual page reference.

I've been lobbying for such an on-line index with various
vendors and have attracted zero interest.  I've suggested
to some database vendors that their "demo" database should
be an index to their documentation.  No interest again.
Oh well....

Trivia:  From the cover of Radio Shack's latest catalog; "Creating
New Standards".  I always wondered where standards came from.

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