Re: PBI: possible ri improvements

On Aug 20, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Rich Morin wrote:

> I've been doing some Sunday reading:
>
>   Interface-Oriented Design
>   Ken Pugh
>   Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2006, ISBN 0-9766940-5-0
>
> In the process, I started thinking about ways that ri
> could be improved.  Here are some Partly-Baked Ideas.
>
>
> Disambiguation
>
> If ri is asked about a string (such as "to_i") that appears
> in multiple method names, it simply lists the matches:
>
>   More than one method matched your request. You can refine
>   your search by asking for information on one of:
>
>     Float#to_i, Float#to_int, Integer#to_i, Integer#to_int,
>     IO#to_i, ..., Zlib::GzipFile#to_io
>
> I see two problems with this approach.  First, all of the
> results are jumbled together.  Second, very little information
> is given about the individual results.  How about:
>
>   More than one method matched your request. You can refine
>   your search by asking for information on one of:

We'll be integrating risearch after 1.8.5, probably as ri -f or  
similar.  (Committing only to HEAD tends to leave things forgotten.)

I'll probably also change it to a list view instead of a jumble.

> To be sure, there are some implementation difficulties with
> this idea.  Specifically:
>
>   *  Some information will need to be gathered:
>
>      -  "generic" descriptions, such as "returns an integer
>         representation".
>
>      -  "same as" information for methods
>
>      -  "stand-alone" descriptions that don't rely (much) on
>         context from a full ri response.
>
>   *  There is the possibility of multiple, clashing generic
>      descriptions (e.g., method "foo" does really different
>      things in different classes).  Then again, this could
>      indicate something to address in the naming...

At worst you just grab the first N characters of the comment.  This  
is a really easy solution and will probably be good enough.

> Context
>
>   Unix man pages have "SEE ALSO" sections that list other,
>   closely-related man pages.  Something like this might be
>   useful in ri.
>
>   It might also be useful to display a "family tree" that
>   shows where the same method shows up in related classes.

I'd also like to get "file name implemented in", which will be  
especially helpful with gems.

-- 
Eric Hodel - [email protected] - http://blog.segment7.net
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

http://trackmap.robotcoop.com