[Vim-l] C, C++, C# Categories and titles

[hermitte at free.fr]

Hello,

John Beckett <johnb.beckett at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sebastian Menge wrote:
> > C, C++, C# Categories and titles
> > How should we deal with that?
>
> I don't understand the desire to specifically subcategorise everything. Why
> not just have one category named C?

Because there are tips for C++ only, some for Java only, and some for C# only ?
I'd say 99% of C tips are appliable to C++, and 60(?)% to Java or C#.
And may be 5% of C++ tips are appliable to C# and Java.

Right now, I can't tell how many tips are related to those 4 languages. I'm just
guessing there are enough tips (from what I remember) to have 4 categories.
However, I must admit that there is certainly a non negligeable number of
duplicate tips.

> Later, when there is a demonstrable need to have subcategories of
> Category:C, we could worry about which
> tips should only be in Category:C, and which only in Category:C++, and which
> both, etc.

Why not. We could put all these categories in the Dodgy Category ? (Meaning we
will se later if they need to be merged (/removed) or split)


> I just browsed a few tips in the C category - they all seemed applicable for
> C++.

They are. However, the opposite is not true.

> I haven't checked, but common sense tells me that there would be few C++
> tips that don't apply to C, even if the tip involves some language feature
> that C is missing.

Well. I've written quite a lot of VimL code that is C++ only (sometimes C is
just indirectly supported, while other similar languages are completly
unsupported). I won't be surprised to see something like 15-20 tips that
are related to C++ (and neither to Java, C#, nor C).


> C# is a bit different, but the only two C# tips are in fact generic tips
> that happen to refer to C#. What if I really want to see a tip on
> refactoring my ancient C program, but I miss the tip because I don't search
> the C# category?
>
> Likewise, what's with TeX and LaTeX? It seems overly-pedantic hair splitting
> to claim that a particular tip concerns LaTeX but not TeX.

On this one, I see no reason to split TeX and LaTeX.

> I recommend having *only* a C category, with suitable text explaining that
> it covers C++ and C# and BCPL and similar languages.

I'm not sure people will go to C category to check if it also covers their
fetish language  (could it be PHP, Java, ...)..

> [...]
> By having C and C++ as separate categories, you force a programmer to search
> BOTH categories.

Isn't there a way to automatically import C tips in C++ category page ?

> BTW I see that Category:TeX is broken in that it doesn't have a parent (and
> it should use CatInfo). I suppose that if HTML is under LanguageSpecific,
> then TeX should be as well?

Indeed.


--
Luc Hermitte