Re: OPEN REQUEST FOR RESURRECTING DOCUMENTATION

2001-03-21 Thread Gustavo João Alves Marques Carneiro

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, 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?

  I'd love to help if you're referring to devel docs. May I suggest the
use of gtk-doc? I've recently learned how to use it and I love it. I
should warn though that I don't know the internals of Dia code, but would
love to, and so will be asking lots of questions.

> 
> If volunteers send me ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) their e-mail addresses,
> 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.
> 
> I do offer my site as a mirror site for dia to support redundancy.
> 
> -Scott
> 
> Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> > 
> > Scott Harrison écrit:
> > 
> > > I have a stable machine on a gigabyte network.  I enjoy documentation
> > > AND am good at it, typically using XML (via Python).
> > > I love Dia.  I am developing a number of things with Dia.  Any chance
> > > I could host the documentation?  Is there access to the original
> > > software documentation? Should we start from scratch?
> > 
> > Perhaps Doxygen (http://www.doxygen.org/) could be used as it allow to write
> > code and doc at the same time ?
> > 
> > Hub
> 
> 

-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
[http://linuxdeec.fe.up.pt/~ee96090]




Re: OPEN REQUEST FOR RESURRECTING DOCUMENTATION

2001-03-20 Thread James Henstridge

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, 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,
> 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.
>
> I do offer my site as a mirror site for dia to support redundancy.

Are you talking about user documentation or developer documentation?  Note
that we now have user documentation (one of the great new features of dia
0.87, provided by the GNOME documentation project).  This is being
distributed with the application.  If you want to contribute to this
documentation, contact the GDP.

There is not much developer documentation at present however.  What sort
of info do you want?

James.




Re: Re: OPEN REQUEST FOR RESURRECTING DOCUMENTATION

2001-03-20 Thread Harry George

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]




Re: OPEN REQUEST FOR RESURRECTING DOCUMENTATION

2001-03-20 Thread Ben A. Hetland


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-+-




Re: OPEN REQUEST FOR RESURRECTING DOCUMENTATION

2001-03-20 Thread Aaron Trevena

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, 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?

I'm more interested in the xml side - ie creating tools to work with the
xml or plugins to work with dia. I'd be able to provide a little about the
xml from my own reverse engineering hopefully one of the dev team can
provide more info (DTD isn't documentation enough).

A.