I'm more referring to the future than today as at somepoint every PECL extension will have documentation. I'll stop worrying
about it then as I most likely won't be downloading or building downloads for the PHP manual :)
The upcoming index format looks nice, and intuitive; and will indeed help a great deal.
I thought a bit about the issues. Let me clear up a few things:
Having PECL docs in the manual is cool for authors:
- we have a ready made infrastructure
(translation groups, language dependant mailing lists,
a complete build system, revhcecks, fallbacks,
distribution system, etc.) - livedocs is primarily tested and developed on phpdoc,
so PECL docs have better testingHaving PECL docs in the manual is good for readers:
- they don't care where a function comes from, they may
install an extension, or their hosting provider does that
for them, and after that they just want to use it.
this provides a central place to get docs - the phpdocs have the best access infrastructure (shortcuts,
search facilities, panels, etc)The MB size of the manual is not a problem for our users IMHO. The only problem is that the manual might get even harder to use with more extensions documented. We need to improve on useability anyway, this just emphasizes the need. It does not matter how big the manual is if it easy to navigate and find stuff in it.
Goba
