Offer to contribute to documentation.
- Posted by xecronix 5 days ago
- 257 views
Continued from "Should to_number return a sequence?"
PPS: At least in my book, to_number() [optionally/sometimes] delivering a typecheck is [often] a perfectly good debugging technique.
I have a lot of respect for you as a developer and that opinion. Thanks.
PS: I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall and see how you found to_number in the Euphoria docs after failing to find it in Phix.chm...
How did I find the function to_number? convert site:https://openeuphoria.org
What didn't work? convert site:https://phix.x10.mx
Why did that work for Euphoria and not Phix? Honestly, dumb luck on my part. I was trying to guess a keyword that might be on a page that talks about casting/transforming/converting data from one type to another. As it turns out, in Euphoria the file that functionality is in is called convert.e and "convert" shows up 188 times on the https://openeuphoria.org/docs/std_convert.html page. However, when I view the source code of that page, I notice there aren't any keywords defined. Same for .chm for Phix.
I possibly just learned something. I might be using the website http://phix.x10.mx/docs/phix.htm in an unexpected way. When browsing for documentation, you might be expecting your users to use .chm and not the web site? Which now makes sense as to why there is no search feature on http://phix.x10.mx/
OK. I just opened the .chm. That's much, much, much better. That's a game changer.
If I'm on the index tab and type to_number chm will show me what I want. But, if I didn't know to_number was what I was looking, that's where the problem comes in. Let's go to the search tab on the chm. If I search for "convert" to_number does not popup in the search results. But if I type "converts" it does.
And for Phix, google didn't find to_number by searching for convert or converts.
Searching for the function "value" doesn't popup in the chm on the index tab. But it did popup in the search tab.
In the end, I think I have a better chance at finding what I want in the Phix chm than on either the Phix or Open Euphoria website. (which is what I was doing)
Call to action
This is an area I think I can help if the help is desired. Please let me know if adding keywords to documentation is a work effort that seems worth doing. And if I can help.
