Documentation 'quick index'

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:38:49 -0500, Piotr Szturmaj <bncrbme at jadamspam.pl>  
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to make ddoc index more readable. Here are some early
> results:
>
> http://bot.neostrada.pl/dpl.org/std.datetime.html
>
> Do you know some free icons of class, enum, function, etc? I'm thinking
> of something like this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library
> /y47ychfe%28v=vs.80%29.aspx

Just an FYI, this does not render properly on opera.  I have only have a  
top-level index that does not operate (and yes, I have javascript on).

My personal opinion is that the index should not rely on javascript  
whatsoever.  If anything, a collapsable index of everything should be  
available at the top (expanded by default if javascript is disabled).   
There should only be one level -- show all or hide all.

In general, DDoc suffers from so many deficiencies, fixing the index seems  
like wasted effort.  I'd prefer improvements like have one page per item  
(class, function, etc) similar to doxygen.  This would turn behemoths such  
as std.datetime into manageable doc pages.  I also think a vastly  
important (and for some reason ignored by ddoc) feature of documentation  
generators is cross referencing.  The whole benefit of having a computer  
generate documentation from source is that it knows how the source is  
related.  That should all be reflected.  For instance, I should be able to  
have a clickable inheritance tree for a class, and be able to have  
clickable links to overridden methods.  Any examples should have clickable  
links to the items being used.  These improvements would improve the docs  
by 2 orders of magnitude, whereas fixing the index is a trivial  
improvement.

Not that the index couldn't use improvement, however I understand the  
reluctance to take up the bigger ddoc tasks, I would not be able to do it.

-Steve