Re: “Function finder”, issue #1469

 > If the top-level sections use details/summary then the ToC is kind of
useless *except* for a quick glance.
> Also, if only the top level sections use details/summary then there’s a
sort of sharp transition
> from “just a title” to “all of everything.” Conversely, if every section
that has subsections uses details/summary
> then it’s even harder to find what you might be looking for because you
have to click open every section.
> Also: the rendering gets a little weird, but that might be fixable with
more CSS.
>
> I wonder if an abbreviated table of contents listing only the top-level
sections, placed just before “1 Introduction”,
> might work better.

Definitely there could be different designs.

A. One is to display initially everything in expanded form and to allow the
reader to collapse any section that is not interesting for them.
B. Another would be within a list of subsections to display only the first
N (again the designer's choice of N in [4, 7])  and to collapse the rest.

I personally would prefer B. (above) or I would want these to be collapsed :

   - 4.8 Trigonometric and exponential functions
   - The whole section "8 Functions and operators on durations".
   - 9.4 Comparison operators on duration, date and time values.
   - 9.5 Component extraction functions on dates and times.
   - 9.7 Arithmetic operators on durations, dates and times.
   - All subsections (leaving the top subsection but hiding its details) of
   "13 Functions and operators on sequences".
   - All subsections (leaving the top subsection but hiding its details) of
   " 14 Parsing and serializing".
   - 16.2 Basic higher-order functions
   - 17.3 Functions that Operate on Maps
   - 18.2 Functions that Operate on Arrays
   - 20.1 Casting from primitive types to primitive types


Thanks,
Dimitre

On Mon, Oct 14, 2024 at 2:02 AM Norm Tovey-Walsh <norm@saxonica.com> wrote:

> Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com> writes:
> > May I propose that in addition to this the TOC is made
> collapsible/expandable?
>
> Using details/summary seems like a good idea, but the results aren’t
> wholly satisfactory.
>
> If the top-level sections use details/summary then the ToC is kind of
> useless *except* for a quick glance. Also, if only the top level sections
> use details/summary then there’s a sort of sharp transition from “just a
> title” to “all of everything.” Conversely, if every section that has
> subsections uses details/summary then it’s even harder to find what you
> might be looking for because you have to click open every section. Also:
> the rendering gets a little weird, but that might be fixable with more CSS.
>
> I wonder if an abbreviated table of contents listing only the top-level
> sections, placed just before “1 Introduction”, might work better.
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>
> --
> Norm Tovey-Walsh
> Saxonica
>