I'm interested in documentation, but know nothing about the internals
(yet). Longer term I want to be able to use Dia functionality
inother programs, esp. called from python, and that requires better
understanding of the internals and the modularization.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Ben A. Hetland wrote:
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:51:01 +0100
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: "Ben A. Hetland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: OPEN REQUEST FOR RESURRECTING DOCUMENTATION
>
>
> Scott Harrison wrote:
> >
> > Fine with me. Nice set of pages you have there. So I guess the
> next
> > big
> > question is,
> >
> > WHO WANTS TO HELP DOCUMENT THINGS?
> >
> > If volunteers send me ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) their e-mail addresses,
>
> Well, I kinda already volunteered, so I'd like to contribute...
> although for the next month or so my first priority will be what is
> needed solely for my [payed] project.
>
>
> > we can begin to set up a new effort at documentation. As soon
> (within
> > a week) as there is some reasonable understanding as to how to
> proceed,
> > we can begin communicating through dia-list as to what is going
> on.
>
> However, please note that the purpose of my original question was
> to
> locate
> documentation & ideas that were already "there somewhere"... and to
> avoid the
> more tedious (and time-consuming) task of reverse-engineering.
>
> (Yes, I know that we programmer's tend to be sloppy about
> documenting
> for
> others what we make... gotta have some trade secrets... ;-)
>
>
>
> >
> > Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> [...snip...]
> > >
> > > Perhaps Doxygen (http://www.doxygen.org/) could be used as it
> allow to write
> > > code and doc at the same time ?
>
> That's an idea. But besides that, Doxygen might (?) have a problem
> identifying
> the classes buried in the Dia design, since after all it's C not
> C++ or
> Java...
>
> In my view, one of the problems with such automated tools to
> "resurrect
> and/or
> reverse engineer" existing code is that they're too accurate --
> they
> include
> all the details and any patological interdependencies that might
> have
> grown
> into the source over the years, thereby obscuring the basic ideas &
> structure.
> (It cannot distinguish between important and unimportant design
> features,
> ending up showing just a lot of "noise".)
>
> IMHO, merely converting code comments into HTML/RTF/whatever
> doesn't
> improve
> _that_ much over just reading the source files directly... It
> doesn't
> always
> reveal the structure.
>
> But that's just me, though... :-)
>
>
> Actually, I made a very tiny start using Dia itself (why not!?!!)
> and
> the UML
> elements, creating a class diagram based on header files and the
> README
> file.
> ...until I found that this was very time-consuming since I had not
> gained any
> familiarity with the source beforehand.
>
>
> -+-Ben-+-
>
>
>
--
Harry George
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
