Re: Ada packages and/on web pages (was Re: GPGME (was Re: GnuPG binding?))

[Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org>]

Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>: Say
>: tomorrow I want to start planning a program that can encrypt/decrypt
>: streams. So I naturally wants to see if somebody else already has done
>: this as a library I can use. So then [...]
>: I'll have to try yahoo or google.
> 
> This is the sad situation that is a necessary consequence of
> not making cross references, via good hyperlinking. (You could
> of course add c.l.ada, or collegues, or ... to your sources of
> information. Just use the human _communications_ network (which
> is also a social network).)

But registering your link at places like freshmeat *IS* cross
referencing. I cannot go into your page and put a link to my page f.ex.

> I am trying to talk about authors who include helpful links to sources
> of information in their articles about their software.

Well were do one find the information then?

> As an example, consider some
> parts of the GNAT library sources. There are reference of the kind,
> "this implementation is based on algorithm xyz, as published in 
> Wizards' Magazine, 1976". I don't need Ada power or Google at _that_
> point to find more comments about the implementation.

No but how do you find gnat if you have no clue where it is?

> As another example, consider a web page giving a bird's eyes view
> of some package. The author might have written in the page's text,
> 
> "The types in this package are derived from AUnit's ABC type."
> 
> or, better, he or she might have written,
> 
> "The types in this package are derived from
><a href="http://libre.act-europe.fr/aunit/">AUnit</a>'s ABC type."
>
> If the author chooses the second option, there is no need to
> search Google for AUnit, and recursively for Unit testing and
> Extreme programming. You will find enough information on the
> linked page, which again (recursively) has pointers (links) to other
> useful information, in this case, pointers to Unit Testing,
> and Extreme Programming. (Transitive closure of good hyperlinks.)

You are talking about referencing to others packages, but how do you get
others to reference to *your* packages? Just look at this page:

   http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/Ada95/Klokka/

as you can see I do this, but it doesn't mean that GNAT will link to my
small toy for experimenting with tasks and gtkada. So to get a reference
to my tool I can register it at freshmeat f.ex so others can find it
when they are looking for something similar.

> So having good links is feasable, in fact the presence of URIs in
> hypertext document type definitions has been a deliberate choice to
> help make this cross referencing a reality ;-) The WWW _could_ be
> a good dictionary, with search engines becoming just a useful add on.

This is in my humble opinion theory at best, utopian at worst. Have you
ever tried to read a heavily crosslinked document? You end up loosing
the thread of the documentation due to too many possible detours.

Hyperlinks are great, but should not be overused.

-- 
Ada95 is good for you.
http://www.crystalcode.com/codemage/MainMenu/Coding/Ada/IntroducingAda.php