Re: Searching in the index is not documented
=- Alan Mackenzie wrote on Thu 17.Aug'06 at 16:14:08 +0100 -=
> As a beginner, I didn't know where to look. Despite searching
> long and hard in the manual for the answers to these questions,
> I didn't find them. {...}
> Hence, I'm suggesting to the Mutt team, in a respectful fashion,
> that it could be helpful to enhance the manual.
Good docs are generally underappreciated to work on.
Working on documentation is not rewarding (enough) for coders, they
prefer to work on technical/ functional improvement rather than
docs. As long as there are such things to fix, this won't change,
and there is a lot of technical stuff to fix for mutt.
That's because unlike improving code -- where you immediately see
the technical benefit when the changes work and people who asked for
it to be implemented report back -- improved docs go unnoticed since
you hardly can see a benefit there: if it helped, people are happy
but quiet about it.
Coders more easily see the need to improve code than docs, since
they use the code themselves, but they know their stuff so don't
need any docs at all. As long as the stuff is _somehow_ documented,
all is fine for them. Plus, it takes _a lot_ more time to improve
whole docs than a small piece of code.
There are a few who'd be willing to work on it (incl. myself), but
there are various reasons why this hasn't happened yet (and maybe
never will).
However, the hope that appreciation of usefulness of docs will
increase dies last. ;)
> I would have found it useful to have read this explicitly in the
> manual 2 months ago.
As mentioned, with the current manual you _could have_ found it if
you had read it completely and remembered all interdependencies.
> Incidentally, what is the significance of the spaces in "~f joe
> | ~s joe"?
Space generally separates the arguments from the function or
command and normally the size doesn't matter as long it only
exists.
Please see PatternQuoting and MuttGuide/Syntax on the wiki for
quoting issues of special chars on multiple levels.
> Why do I have to guess?
Because some things are considered to be intuitive.
But I agree, more explicity(?) wouldn't hurt.
--
© Rado S. -- You must provide YOUR effort for your goal!
Even if it seems insignificant, in fact EVERY effort counts
for a shared task, at least to show your deserving attitude.