Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!portal!atari!apratt From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: GNU Emacs manual sales figures [summary] Message-ID: <2846@atari.UUCP> Date: 1 Mar 91 01:18:11 GMT References: Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA Lines: 35 hollen@megatek.UUCP (Dion Hollenbeck) writes: >Without knowing the name of exactly the function you want, >it is impossible to look it up in the index. [...] Since functions >in Emacs generally have a word somewhere in the function name >which is descriptive of what you want [...] This sounds like a job for an inverted index. like a job for an inverted 1 index. This sounds This sounds like a job for an 1 inverted index. index. This sounds like a 1 job for an inverted an inverted index. This 1 sounds like a job for for an inverted index. 1 This sounds like a job Read down the '1' column -- that's the page number where a sentence appears which contains the word to the right of the page number. The sentence itself surrounds the page number (wrapping at the end of the line) for context, so you know which of those instances of the word you're looking for is interesting to you. The BSD 4.1 (at least) documentation has one of these based on the one-sentence description of each thing there's a man page for. (That sentence is the output of apropos, too). It's relatively easy to generate algorithmically. For Emacs, of course, you'd use dashes in the command name as word breaks, but you can also use the text of the help message for each command. An inverted index is not exactly concise, and at one line per citation they run to several pages, but they're immensely valuable for information like this. Essentially, it *is* apropos, in printed form. Just trying to be helpful... ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt