Stig Sæther Bakken writes:
> On php-dev we're trying to get together a plan for PHP 4.1 now. One
> of the things we want to do is to take most extensions out of the PHP
> distribution itself and make them available for example though PEAR.
I think this is a great idea.
The one thing that I hope is done well is a
migration document so that people moving from 4.0.x to 4.1
don't get chomped too hard.
> That touches upon the problem of merging documentation from PEAR
> (there actually is some, hidden in JavaDoc comments :-)...
>
> When PEAR and PHPDoc finally get to the point where you can easily
> generate DocBook reference docs, how should we deal with that?
>
> Should all the PEAR docs become part of the manual? Maybe only the
> PEAR packages bundled with PHP should be part of the manual? If so,
> how do we best make the rest of the PEAR docs available?
>
> The PHP manual is kinda suffering from the same problem as PHP itself:
> it's huge.
>
> Is it worthwhile to try doing something about that, by splitting the
> manual up somehow?
IMHO, I don't think the manual needs to be broken up, and
the PEAR docs should be merged into the main manual. I bow
of course to the mastery of Egon, Jouni, et al, but surely
we need not view the bloat of a manual in the same light
as the bulging of php itself. Fat books are good, fat downloads
are bad. :)
Regards
Mike Robinson
