Is there a way to quickly get a hash of all the doc files?
I am of the conviction that the more automated things are, the better the experience for the user. Hence, if this only adds a few seconds at the start-up (assuming it is optimized enough, perhaps relying on a secondary tool to do indexing that returns a list to tcl), I am all for that...
I'd _much_ rather have the automation happen when the user decides to click the button that opens the "Search dialog". Even better, I'd like the
New users will be totally oblivious to what this means. When a new user picks up pd (or in this case pd-l2ork, as was the case this summer with 30+ 5th-12th graders) you want things to just work. New users can understand better start-up progress bars than they can continuous hang-ups during operations, particularly if that also requires potentially confusing options that have to be activated manually. Perhaps adding an option to the preferences file to disable default behavior of indexing at startup could be a compromise between the two and if the auto-indexing is disabled, you also get the manual button for indexing appear in the browser (or wherever appropriate)...