Re: duff link to functions in manual

[Jeremy Nicoll - ml sed <jn.ml.sed45@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2020-03-17 13:15, John Rickman wrote:
> In message <82abe874635c9983c1175a25a62ec508@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> you
> wrote:

> > It's far better that users find a search engine they like, and learn
> > to use it properly.
>
> I have to disagree with this pov.
>
> In order to search the StrongED site for a key word I would have to set 
> up
> an elaborate search term which includes the appropriate URL for the 
> site
> plus the search term. This is a lot of faff and is likely to contain
> typos, in my case. And then I would have to find somewhere to store it 
> or
> do it all again next time.

You're vastly over-complicating it.

Because you need to search lots of things often, you store the URL of 
your
favourite search engine somewhere convenient to you.  (In my case I have
just two user-defined icons on each browser's toolbar - one is for the
'root' page of a set of bookmarks pages I use, the other is for my
choice of search engine).  So for me, that means "right-click the latter
icon, choose 'open in new tab').

To search a specific site you c&p the site URL from (in this case) the
SE help page you're looking at, to the "Site:" field on the search page
and, if needed, reduce it to just the site name (unless you want to
limit the search to a subset of the whole site).

You type the criteria for the actual search into the other relevant 
fields.
You have no need to remember each search engine's own syntax for non-
trivial searches, because the 'advanced search' page has fields for
each aspect.


You apply the same method to every other search you need to do.  That 
is,
you learn one trick and then you use it everywhere.


To some extent, that's a RO (and Unix/Linux) way.


--
Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own