Re: [boost] library overview page (was Re: Boost to the rescue)

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-27 21:06:18

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:09:56 -0400, David Abrahams wrote
 
> Someone at ACCU suggested that we have a "libraries overview page"
> that contains a short introduction and a mini-tutorial example for
> each of the libraries.  I think it's a great idea and would vastly
> increase accessibility of the libraries.

Good idea, but what does it mean in practical fact?  It would be a hugely long
page to have a tutorial of all the libraries.  Just putting the library list
no longer fits on a single page.  We already have libraries by category.

Several years ago I had the idea that a graphical view of the library
categories might be a nice way to navigate among the libraries.  My little
prototype is still on the wiki (each category is a hyperlink to the category
on the libs by category page).

http://www.crystalclearsoftware.com/cgi-bin/boost_wiki/wiki.pl?BoostUserFAQ

Now I can imagine we could do other things like bring up lists of the
libraries in a category, etc. Is it better than a simple text list?  I
personally like it better, but it certainly never caught on.

Another idea is to make get the library documentation links immediately
available from the front page.  Make the front page 3 columns and have all the
libraries or at least the categories listed on the left column...

Yet another idea would be to have a single page library teaser, including code
example, linked available from the library list.  So a few sentences of intro
text and some code examples as a really fast intro that people could scan to
get the gist of the library in action.

Jeff