documentation - full text search useful?

[Geoff Canyon]

The documentation for 1.1.1 is already up at

http://wiki.macitworks.com/revdocs

I'll put 2.0 up as soon as I can get to it. This is not an official 
runrev site, but a personal project.

The site is user-updateable, meaning that if you have something to 
contribute you can add it right now, no password required.

You can search the entire site directly through the site itself. That 
search is up to date with any changes/additions that have been made, 
but it's slow. The server is an old computer, and the software running 
the site isn't very efficient (needs to be rewritten in Revolution!)

You can search the site quickly by using google. Just add

site:wiki.macitworks.com/revdocs

to your search terms. This search obviously isn't as up to date, but 
the documentation portion of the site is fairly static so it's not a 
big issue.

A final note on google searching: there are several different types of 
pages on the server for each actual content page. You might see urls 
like this:

http://wiki.macitworks.com/revdocs/1447.history
http://wiki.macitworks.com/revdocs/1447.upload
http://wiki.macitworks.com/revdocs/1447

You want the one with no extension (the last one above).

On Sunday, June 1, 2003, at 06:18  AM, Marian Petrides wrote:

> I, for one, would appreciate the ability to keyword search the dox.  
> One of helpful thing that the printed dox (for 1.1 anyway) lack is an 
> index--and keyword searchability would help in this regard--although I 
> personally still prefer to work on my computer, while referring to 
> printed dox.
>
> Marian
> On Sunday, June 1, 2003, at 07:46 AM, 
> revolution at knowledgeworks.plus.com wrote:
>
>>
>> I've been following the discussions about the roots of Rev in 
>> Hypercard, and the problems that people have with using the 
>> documentation.
>>
>> I think it is really quite useful for those new to Rev to be able to 
>> get their heads round the fundamental principles of Hypercard.  (I 
>> think maybe there could/should be an orientation tutorial that would 
>> server this purpose).  I know I found Goodman's book a bit too 
>> simple, and find the Kamins et al. book far more useful (although 
>> that probably jumps in a bit too far from where Goodman starts...)
>>
>> About the documentation that comes with Rev.  Given that it is pretty 
>> damn thorough, and very well hyper-linked throughout, one of the only 
>> ways in which I can see it being made more easy for people to find 
>> information within it is if the whole thing was searchable.
>>
>> I think I could quite easily provide a web site with a search 
>> facility that would be able to do a fast search of all the 
>> documentation.
>>
>> Of course I do not want to go ahead and do this unless it would be 
>> useful to others, and is sanctioned by Runrev as not breaching their 
>> copyright (the legal blurb says something to the effect that the 
>> documentation cannot be redistributed in any form whatsoever).
>>
>> As an example of what this would achieve: I exported the entire 
>> documentation set to my hard disk, and searched for the word 'memory' 
>> (just a word chosen at randdom).  I found 110 hits, but browsing 
>> through the documentation I could only find two or three.  
>> Admittedly, some of my hits will be cross-references, but still I 
>> think this would provide quite an exhaustive way for people to be 
>> able to trawl through the documentation.

regards,

Geoff Canyon
gcanyon at inspiredlogic.com