Forgot to mention: I could also use quick-reference information of
procedure/macro syntax/args in Emacs, for displaying in echo area or
tooltip as you're editing a use of the procedure/macro.
So, how the quick-reference gets implemented might influence how getting
the URL for more documentation gets implemented.
Neil Van Dyke wrote at 06/25/2011 04:13 AM:
If I'm in Emacs, and I have a symbol for some Racket standard library
procedure or syntax, and I want to get the URL (or open the URL in
browser) for the documentation for that symbol... what is a good and
fast way to do that?
Ideas I've considered so far:
1. Use "racket/help". I don't want to do this, since I'd really
prefer not to keep a "racket" process open for this purpose, and
invoking "racket" each time is uncomfortably slow. (As the below
timings show, the "help" macro is not very fast: on my 2GHz dual-core
(with no swap), when the pertinent files *are* cached by Linux,
getting the URL takes about 2.6 seconds. When caches are empty except
for what is needed to start the "racket" process, getting the URL
takes about 15.6 seconds. Looking up *subsequent* symbols in the same
"racket" process takes only around 0.2 seconds, however.)
2. Keep a "racket" process open and use some lookup of my own design.
I'm guessing this is the same as "racket/help", and so I have the same
objections.
3. Have Emacs find the appropriate "index.html" on the filesystem or
on "racket-lang.org", and then send a URL to that with the "q" query
parameter for my symbol, letting the JS look up the documentation, and
waiting for the JS the first time. This will at least get me a list
of search hits, but won't jump to the documentation for the exact symbol.
4. Have Emacs load the documentation indexes (perhaps in the
background when idle, at startup, and when we notice they change) and
do the lookup in Emacs. This is what Quack did for older PLT
documentation, and it stopped working when the documentation format
changed and I didn't have time to rewrite. I could also be sensitive
about things like which "#lang" we were in (like I could with an
external process, if I passed it the "#lang" information).
Any more ideas/thoughts? (Other than pressing me on why I'd rather
not keep a "racket" process open for this purpose. Eventually the new
Emacs mode, Meow, will probably do that for things like Check Syntax,
but I don't want to go there yet if I don't have to.)
Note that all these require some notion of *from which Racket install
tree or which Racket version on the Web do you want this
documentation*, and that's some HCI and coding work that has to be
done in any case.
---- BEGIN ----
~ echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
3
~ echo '(display "hello, world!\n")' | racket
Welcome to Racket v5.1.1.
> hello, world!
>
~ time echo "(help begin)" | racket
Welcome to Racket v5.1.1.
> Loading help index...
Sending to web browser...
file: /usr/local/racket-5.1.1/share/racket/doc/reference/begin.html
anchor: (form._((quote._~23~25kernel)._begin))
Starting Firefox...
>
real 0m15.584s
user 0m2.472s
sys 0m0.180s
~ time echo "(help begin)" | racket
Welcome to Racket v5.1.1.
> Loading help index...
Sending to web browser...
file: /usr/local/racket-5.1.1/share/racket/doc/reference/begin.html
anchor: (form._((quote._~23~25kernel)._begin))
Starting Firefox...
>
real 0m2.622s
user 0m2.240s
sys 0m0.124s
~ time echo "(begin (help and) (help or))" | racket
Welcome to Racket v5.1.1.
> Loading help index...
Sending to web browser...
file: /usr/local/racket-5.1.1/share/racket/doc/reference/if.html
anchor: (form._((lib._racket/private/letstx-scheme..rkt)._and))
Starting Firefox...
Sending to web browser...
file: /usr/local/racket-5.1.1/share/racket/doc/reference/if.html
anchor: (form._((lib._racket/private/letstx-scheme..rkt)._or))
Starting Firefox...
>
real 0m2.858s
user 0m2.216s
sys 0m0.116s
~ ---- END ----
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