My Rails Cross Reference proposal got the nod YAY!!!

Courtenay over @ teh Caboo.se writes

I think this is the best starting point so far.

Full blog entry.

The wiki link that Courtenay points to., And the text of the blessed entry:

Problem: You know what you want to do, but you don’t know what method is appropriate.

As Is Situation: Right now, the search of the RAILS API documentation is one way. In other words, the “documenters” decide what goes into the description of a method/class etc. So if they are not thinking of that other usage for a particular class/module/method, you will not find it.

Example: For example, I’m looking for some method to do task X, I use keywords A or M or Q to search for it, they seem intuitive to me, but I don’t find it. This could be because I have a different perspective on the problem, or I am using diffferent terms to describe the situation. Finally, through trial and error, I find that keyword F and Z are what this is under (ie; if I search for keyword terms F or Z, I’ll find the thing I need which performs the thing I’m trying to accomplish).

Now, the user would like to propose that keywords: A, M, Q should also be added to the cross reference “Tag Set” so that people who look at the problem domain from the same point of view as myself, would find it easily. (Kind of what Google does automatically by correlating queries with the eventual click etc.)

So, if there is a way for users to submit “tags” for each method, and those tags get included in the official documentation.

(Amr Malik amrmalikNOSP@Mgmail.com)