summaries of contributed programs

[Darrell McCauley]

> tools.  Past experience in programming has shown that quickest results are 
> often gained by modifying a piece of exisiting code, rather than starting 
> from scratch, so I wanted to hunt around for likely stuff in the existing 

usually... (not to spread discord among the believers, but some of the
code looks terrible. most is okay though :).

> Is there a compilation of summaries of contributed programs anywhere that 
> can be grabbed *without* downloading all of the archives?  

I seem to recall seeing some sort of index of commands, perhaps in the 
programming manual. I don't recall if descriptions were attached, but
this would be a good place to start.  Sounds like a good student project
for a GIS class (anyone teach such a class? ;-)

> Wouldn't it make sense for manual pages for all contributed programs to be 
> stored in a separate archive so that they can be accessed independently?  

no, not really (since the programs are contributed). This may present 
unnecessary burden on the moon-maintainer(s). I think that a readily 
available summary (perhaps with a paragraph for each command, when
necessary) would serve the purpose.

> Is this functionality already available somehow?  

Perhaps if someone took the one-line descriptions from all man pages,
but longer descriptions would be more useful.

--Darrell McCauley, Purdue University