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#64 make all PDL docs available via pdldoc
It would be nice if all the PDL documentation available
could be installed so that users looking for a given
feature could discover if PDL supported the feature
at all. We could notate the output from help/apropos
or pdldoc to indicate that the given feature is not
installed---and maybe suggest a way to get it.
I remember suggesting something like this, except that we would install stub .pm files which would not load and/or which would contain documentation explaining how to actually install the module. Somebody expressed opposition to this idea, though I do not remember precisely why.
Perhaps we could create a special PDL module, say PDL::Unavailable.pm, that would contain the documentation for the various functions provided by the modules of interest, but all under that file. This way pdldoc would be able to find it, but it wouldn't throw off users be have a stub module lying around.
In a related bug, we should *prevent* the installation of modules that depend on Slatec when Slatec is not installed, rather than installing those .pm files. It's irritating looking up documentation for linear fitting on my machine, and then discovering that the module croaks because I don't have Slatec. Specifically, I am thinking about PDL::Fit::Linfit.
If you substitute "stub .pm files" with "stub .pod files"
that would help avoid any confusion about install
status. Since PDL::Config should have information
on what modules were actually built, it could generate
the .pod and with the correct warning that the feature
is not installed.
We seem to have some interest as seen in pdl-porters discussion starting by kmx.