[TYPO3-hci] Documenting Typoscript

[Christopher]

Ernesto Baschny [cron IT] wrote:
> Christopher schrieb am 08.06.2006 21:32:
> 
> 
>>If we are going to document TS, I have one request that comes before
>>anything else I can think of:
>>
>>*ALPHABETICAL ORDER* in property tables!
> 
> 
> I don't see any reason why. If you are searching for some property, you
> can use the browsers "Find". 

Fine in a browser, but 'Book 1.0' has no built-in search function...

> If you don't know the name of the property
> to find, what good would it do if they are in alphabetical order?

You can't be serious?

Sorting a list alphabetically has nothing to do with knowing or not 
knowing the names of the items in the list. It has to do with being able 
to quickly locate /known/ property names. This is particularly true when 
the list in question spans many pages--look at the 'config' section of a 
/printed/ copy of the TSref to see what I mean.

Dictionaries, library catalogs, database records are all organized 
according to more or less arbitrary systems, not because the organizing 
systems are inherently descriptive of the records they organize, but to 
facilitate retrieval.

Notice that the organizational principles in the examples above are not 
usually based on any inherent property of the organized material. 
Dictionaries are one exception, but even in this case, the order--based 
as it is on the purely conventional order of the Roman alphabet, and (in 
English at least) the highly inconsistent rules of spelling and 
orthography--is fairly arbitrary.

In all of these systems, there are (and should be) other access points 
(i.e. the fact that dictionaries list synonyms, that library catalogs 
allow sorting by subject, title, and author, and of course the fact that 
databases can be queried using a very sophisticated syntax).

> The current order is either by functionality or by most-frequently used,
> as JoH pointed out. Maybe we need a little more grouping or otherwise
> visual hints on where we are at a huge table.

'most-frequently used'? I'm sorry to disagree, but that is /far/ too 
weak an organizational principle by which to sort a list of this type 
/if it is the only sorting available/. Can you imagine a library or 
dictionary sorted this way? What if the php manual were sorted according 
to most used functions? [1]

I'm really astonished that there is serious /resistance/ to the idea of 
sorting--or having the option to sort--long, complex lists of properties 
/according to their names/. stdWrap is (as pointed out by Joey and 
Irene), the solitary case where there seems to be /any/ compelling 
reason to sort in a non-alphabetic way.

But for TS properties in general the organizing principle currently used 
in the tables is extremely weak and should either be improved or 
augmented with a proper index.


-Christopher


[1] http://php.net/manual/en/function.strstr.php