GNU bug report logs - #41006
26.3; regular expressions documentation

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From: jan <rtm443x <at> googlemail.com>
To: rms <at> gnu.org
Cc: Mattias Engdegård <mattiase <at> acm.org>, 41006 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#41006: 26.3; regular expressions documentation
Date: Mon, 4 May 2020 10:13:06 +0100

Hi all,
I'd like to push back here a little, to what I originally raised
because it's simple.

In my case I couldn't find ~50% of the regex docs. I only continued to
hunt because I knew it was there.
In the linked question I gave
(<http://emacs.1067599.n8.nabble.com/regex-question-td75006.html>) the
questioner had to be actually told of the other section in the manual.
The problem is the information is split into sections but without
visibility from one section that the other exists.

Solution: that's up to you. I'd say simply make one long list instead
of 2 shorter, but if not that then *make a clear link between them*.
The fact that they're split by some historic classification is true,
but not IMO important any more - all I want is the basic property of
findability. Unify these 2 islands or show a clear bridge between
them, anything that stops one being being marooned for lack of
visibility.

Stefan's experience indicates a third island, also unbridged if I read
him right.

Make the relationship between these semantically related places highly
visible is all I'm suggesting.

cheers

jan

On 04/05/2020, Richard Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org> wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > The disposition of the regexp documentation could be improved,
>   > yes. Currently it's arranged by syntax, which is the implementor's
>   > view, rather than by function, which is the user's.
>
> Would you like to propose an ordering and classification by function?
> Then we could think about whether it is better.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>

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