Tasks:

• look at methodto_s to figure out what class or module defines it (where to first look for help)

• if the module or class isn't loaded, look at the module docs to trace its inheritance tree for method help lookup

  • "Foo < Bar", ohh, look in Bar next

  • "Includes:... Baz, Enumerable", ooh, look in Baz and Enumerable too

• try to get the ancestor-lookup stuff into rdoc itself so that the help method can use rdoc directly without having to hack into the internals

  • global gains, ri'd work better too :)

Future:

High-level goal: Learning Ruby from irb

1. fire up irb
2. type ihelp
3. read
4. emerge with understanding

Kinda like Python's help()

Things that would be nice

• Generate docs for a class if they don't exist

  • by running rdoc --ri on all loaded source files?

• Help browser (follow links, view method source, like www.ruby-doc.org)

• Integrate books into the help, and help into the books (_why's guide, pickaxe, others)

  • IHelp.books

  • IHelp.books.search "TCPServer"

  • book help integration == book method links bring up help docs

• Search facility

  • IHelp.search "pipe deadlock"

    • searches ri docs, books, mailinglist

Things that are needed for those

• Help browser (just use the web browser?)

• Document format for the browser

• Books in the document format

• Mailing list search interface

Thoughts risen from the above

• the help browser would be good to be parallel to irb -> keep docs open while coding

[Validate]

Generated with the Darkfish Rdoc Generator 2.