[Doc-SIG] An 'apropos' utility for documentations

[David Ascher]

> Manuel Gutierrez Algaba writes:
>  > Well, the idea is to do an apropos command ( written in python
>  >  of course) containing all the 'concepts' and tips related with
>  > the documentation of a program. 
> 
>   Sorry for not responding to this sooner.
>   I'm not sure if I understand what you want very well.  Are you
> asking for a more elaborate form of the traditional apropos command,
> or are you looking for an apropos that operates on the Python library?
> If the former, I can see it taking the form of an advanced
> manual-searching interface, hopefully tied in (somehow) with the
> standard man/apropos system.
>   If you're looking for an apropos that operates on the Python
> documentation, that's something for which support could be added to
> the logical markup of the documentation to some degree, and then an
> external utility could be used to build and query the database.  This
> is certainly something we can consider as the source form of the
> documentation moves from LaTeX to SGML.
>   Please elaborate / clarify on your idea; I'm interested!

FYI: if I understand the idea, it's similar to something I did a long
while back using simple tools on Unix (the .info version of the manuals,
and spawing the TTY version of 'info' on them, w/ a little hacked-up
index which mapped words to GNU info nodes). See the code at:
http://starship.skyport.net/~da/ihelp/.

Having the markup in the doc would make that kind of project maintainable
in the long run (the reason why I haven't updated 'ihelp' in years).

--david