[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hoogle and Network.Socket

[wren ng thornton]

Achim Schneider wrote:
> Thomas DuBuisson <thomas.dubuisson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I still prefer showing all platform results sorted into separate
> > sections with headers, but understand that I am in the minority.
>
> You aren't alone. Labelling them prominently with POSIX, UNIX, Linux,
> *BSD, OSX resp. Windoze is a Good Thing: That way, noone has to dig
> into package docs. "Show N more results specific to platform Foo"-links
> would be a good idea, too.


Indeed, you are not alone.

Though, I think it might be easier to have an icon next to the search 
hits, rather than segregating by platform--- since 
segregating/sectioning runs counter to relevance ranking. Of course 
icons clutter things up (though we can be innovative about what "icon" 
means and use them to colorize text or similar; since we have so few of 
them). But then there's a whole literature on clustered search engines 
that we could delve into for UI considerations (clustered-search folks 
tend to care about such things).

The main point is that I think even arch/os/compiler-specific packages 
should be searched by default and simply annotated as being 
platform-specific, rather than requiring flags (a hitherto undocumented 
feature). Cookies should be used to facilitate or suppress such platform 
specificities (with a URL interface to adjust the cookie).


Lacking a wiki account,
~wren