Here's the current status for the Pod Indexing Project.
SUMMARY
* The deadline for perl-5.8.8 is 2005-10-16
* 13 files have been indexed so far (1685 entries)
* Pod-Index-0.12 is available on CPAN
* Please try the online demo at http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/perldoc-k.cgi . This is just a thin CGI wrapper around the underlying modifications to perldoc.
* Please look at "PLAN" and "WHAT YOU CAN DO" below if you want to help.
I - INDEXED FILES
As of this writing, these are the files that have been indexed. The latest stats are available at http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/wiki/index.cgi?IndexStats .
71 perldata
483 perlfunc
34 perlmod
41 perlobj
282 perlop
78 perlpod
183 perlre
73 perlref
80 perlrun
78 perlsub
79 perlsyn
44 perltie
159 perlvar
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1685 total
(the first column is the number of entries for that file).
This already covers a major part of the "central" documentation (the pods labeled "Reference Manual" in perl.pod, particularly the first paragraph of the list).
II - SOFTWARE
Pod-Index-0.12 is available on CPAN. It includes modules for parsing the pods, extracting the X<> index entries, generating the index, searching the index, and extracting the relevant sections from the pods.
A modified perldoc is available at http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/pod-indexing-snapshot/ . This perldoc adds the "-k" option for searching the index. It requires Pod-Index to do the searching. If these modifications are added to the core perl distribution, Pod-Index would have to be added as well.
III - PLAN
According to Nicholas Clark, Changes should be in blead by midnight (GMT) on the 16th October 2005 to make it into perl-5.8.8. So far, I've done all of the indexing myself. I've heard from people who say they are interested, but no one has sent me indexed files yet. I'd like to get as many as possible of the "Reference Manual" done by then, and then maybe some of the tutorials as well.
IV - WHAT YOU CAN DO
Besides indexing the files, you can also try the current index at http://pod-indexing.annocpan.org/perldoc-k.cgi , and let me know if some searches don't return what you would expect (given the files currently indexed).
