doc: A Perl repository from crab2313

p6doc -- an attempt to write something like 'perldoc' for Perl 6

A HTML version of this documenation can be found at http://doc.perl6.org/

With a Rakudo 'perl6' executable in PATH, try

    ./bin/p6doc Str

to see the documentation for class Str, or

    ./bin/p6doc Str.split

to see the documentation for method split in class Str

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Help Wanted!

Perl 6 is not a small language, and documenting it takes a lot of effort.
Any help is appreciated.

Here are some ways to help us:

 * add missing documentation for classes, roles, methods or operators
 * add usage examples to existing documentation
 * write a tool that renders the documentation as HTML
 * proofread and correct the documentation

--------

Some notes:

Q: Why aren't you embedding the docs in the CORE sources?
A: Several reasons:
      1.  This documentation is intended to be universal with
          respect to a given version of the specification,
          and not necessarily tied to any specific Perl 6
          implementation.
      2.  Implementations' handling of embedded POD is still
          a bit uneven; this avoids potential runtime impacts.
      3.  A separate repo in the perl6 Github account invites
          more potential contributors and editors.

Q: Should I include methods from superclasses or roles
A: No. In time we'll develop a mechanism to extract those
   automatically. Including all inherited methods manually
   simply doesn't scale.

Q: Which license is this stuff under?
A: Both code and documentation are available under the Artistic License 2.0
   as published by The Perl Foundation. See the 'LICENSE' file for the full
   text.

--------

Wishlist stuff:

 *  Search terms like ".any", "any()", "&any", "::Any", etc. can be
    used to disambiguate whether information is sought on a method,
    subroutine, type, etc.

 *  Searching for "Int.Bool" returns the documentation for the
    inherited method "Numeric.Bool".

 *  Searching for an operator name returns the documentation for
    the operator.  ("p6doc '%%'"  returns the documentation for
    &infix:<%%>.)

 *  Perl6 implementations could embed P<...> tags in their source 
    code that would then inline the corresponding entry from p6doc.  
    This would enable things like "&say.WHY" to (dynamically!) 
    retrieve the documentation string from p6doc, without having 
    to duplicate the documentation in the CORE.setting sources
    or to encode the documentation into the binaries.
    Example:

        # In Rakudo's src/core/IO.pm:

        #= P<p6doc/&print>
        sub print(|$) { ... }

        #= P<p6doc/&say>
        sub say(|$) { ... }

        #= P<p6doc/&note>
        sub note(|$) { ... }
crab2313/doc
