Pod Indexing Project Status and Plans

Hi,

Here's the current status for the Pod Indexing Project.

SUMMARY

* The deadline for perl-5.8.8 is 2005-10-16
* 13 files have been indexed so far (1685 entries)
* Pod-Index-0.12 is available on CPAN
* Please try the online demo at 
http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/perldoc-k.cgi . This is just a thin CGI 
wrapper around the underlying modifications to perldoc.
* Please look at "PLAN" and "WHAT YOU CAN DO" below if you want to help.


I - INDEXED FILES

As of this writing, these are the files that have been indexed. The 
latest stats are available at 
http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/wiki/index.cgi?IndexStats .

  71 perldata
483 perlfunc
  34 perlmod
  41 perlobj
282 perlop
  78 perlpod
183 perlre
  73 perlref
  80 perlrun
  78 perlsub
  79 perlsyn
  44 perltie
159 perlvar
-----------
1685 total

(the first column is the number of entries for that file).

This already covers a major part of the "central" documentation (the 
pods labeled "Reference Manual" in perl.pod, particularly the first 
paragraph of the list).


II - SOFTWARE

Pod-Index-0.12 is available on CPAN. It includes modules for parsing the 
pods, extracting the X<> index entries, generating the index, searching 
the index, and extracting the relevant sections from the pods.

A modified perldoc is available at 
http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/pod-indexing-snapshot/ . This perldoc 
adds the "-k" option for searching the index. It requires Pod-Index to 
do the searching. If these modifications are added to the core perl 
distribution, Pod-Index would have to be added as well.


III - PLAN

According to Nicholas Clark, Changes should be in blead by midnight 
(GMT) on the 16th October 2005 to make it into perl-5.8.8. So far, I've 
done all of the indexing myself. I've heard from people who say they are 
interested, but no one has sent me indexed files yet. I'd like to get as 
many as possible of the "Reference Manual" done by then, and then maybe 
some of the tutorials as well.


IV - WHAT YOU CAN DO

Besides indexing the files, you can also try the current index at 
http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/perldoc-k.cgi , and let me know if some 
searches don't return what you would expect (given the files currently 
indexed).

Cheers,
Ivan