Searching the documentation (was Re: CLUTs)

[Graham Samuel]

On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 14:30:14 -0600  "Ken Ray" <kray at sonsothunder.com> wrote:
>
>Graham,
>
>If you would rather have a copy of the 1.1.1 docs in TEXT, RTF or PDF
>format that you can do searches through with Word, Acrobat etc., you can
>get a copy at my site:
>
>http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/revolution/revolution.htm
>
>... go to the Downloads section.
>
>After I wrote
>  > Thanks yet again, colorMap turns out to be what I was looking for. I
>>  wish the docs had a more comprehensive search facility - I don't know
>>  when (if ever) I would have come across the term colorMap if you
>  > hadn't pointed it out...
>  >
Thank you, and when desperate I daresay I will try a free text search 
through the RTF or whatever. In this particular case though I would 
never have found the word 'CLUT' because it's not there. What I 
really want is a more extended and at the same time accessible 
structure in the online documentation - like a chapter called 'all 
about color'. We kind of have this in the 'See Also' pulldowns, but 
they do involve a large amount of shifting around - for example, 
there are 14 'See Also's for the colorMap entry, and each and every 
one has to be investigated just to see if it will shed any light on 
colour (sorry I'm British) management. Now in fact I also see that 
there is an article 'about colors and color specifications' (which I 
suspect doesn't cover each and every property and command relating to 
colour), but this isn't headlined anywhere. It's a subsection of 
'Appearance and Positioning' in the Development Guide, and only a 
careful reading of the right hand list that comes up when you pick 
this topic reveals the 'colors' article.

In practice I have often found that I can't make the connections 
without knowing the vocabulary first - so in a way I am just looking 
for a better tool for scanning the docs, but not an unstructured 
search except as a last resort. I wouldn't say all this but for the 
fact that quite a lot of the answers given by those with True 
Knowledge on the list to the rest of us, are basically of the form 
'have you looked at a certain bit of the documentation?' IMHO there 
must be a reason for this.

Just my two pence (UK) or two (Euro) cents.

Graham
-- 
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          Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France