Re: Discussion on the structure and purpose of /info/dir

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Peter J. Farley III wrote:

> My basic argument is that "/info/dir" is insufficient to the needs of 
> either new users or experts when the person invoking info does not know 
> in advance the name of the utility they need to use to accomplish some 
> task.  I make a suggestion below on what structure *would* satisfy 
> those needs, one that has broad, general entries at the start, 
> functional breakdowns of the available utilities in the middle, and an 
> alphabetical list at the end.  I also suggest that a concept index is 
> not out of order for "/info/dir".

It is my opinion that menus are not suited for searching for specific 
issues.  The right vehicle for this is "info --apropos".

An index for DIR might be a good idea, but since indexing is something 
humans (as opposed to programs) should do, I doubt that this would be a 
practical alternative to "info --apropos".