Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-03 Thread Michalis Kamburelis

Mark de Wever wrote:

Hi all,

I like to put a lot of comment in the source and I would like fpdoc to
output this comment into the output files. I wrote a small patch to do
this with types, it puts all the comment in front of a type declaration 
into the output html as section "Comment text". 



(This is kind of shameless self promotion, since I took the PasDoc 
projects this year: )


If you want to get documentation generated from comments in your source 
code, PasDoc may be a better tool for you. See [http://pasdoc.sf.net/].


Michalis
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-03 Thread Florian Klaempfl
Michalis Kamburelis wrote:

> Mark de Wever wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I like to put a lot of comment in the source and I would like fpdoc to
>> output this comment into the output files. I wrote a small patch to do
>> this with types, it puts all the comment in front of a type
>> declaration into the output html as section "Comment text".
> 
> 
> (This is kind of shameless self promotion, since I took the PasDoc
> projects this year: )

Why ;)? Indeed, if you want generated docs from comments, better use pasdoc.

> 
> If you want to get documentation generated from comments in your source
> code, PasDoc may be a better tool for you. See [http://pasdoc.sf.net/].
> 
> Michalis
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-03 Thread Sebastian Günther
Florian Klaempfl schrieb:
> 
> Why ;)? Indeed, if you want generated docs from comments, better use pasdoc.

the source scanner used by fpDoc supports reading of comments for quite
some time; but as I already told you (or was it Mattias?), the final
support in fpDoc is still missing.
If there is really interest in this feature, I will have a look at it.
(And no, I didn't inspect the sent patch yet.)
Any more opinions? Important, not so important?


- Sebastian
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-03 Thread L505


> Florian Klaempfl schrieb:
> >
> > Why ;)? Indeed, if you want generated docs from comments, better use pasdoc.
>
> the source scanner used by fpDoc supports reading of comments for quite
> some time; but as I already told you (or was it Mattias?), the final
> support in fpDoc is still missing.
> If there is really interest in this feature, I will have a look at it.
> (And no, I didn't inspect the sent patch yet.)
> Any more opinions? Important, not so important?
>


I think comments will be useful and important for developer versions of the
documentation. Users may not care about the comments in the source code, but it 
will
be really useful for a "developer version" of the docs. Many times I write 
comments
in the code describing what the code does, so this comment feature in FPDOC 
would
help us make developer documentation clearer (users reading the docs, may not 
care
about comments so much).

Kind of unrelated, but I'll be working on a CGI program that taps on top of the 
FPDOC
generated HTML files and allows users to make notes and comments via their web
browser underneath the help documents. The way to get users do more work in 
writing
documentation, is to have a comment system right up live on the website. Even 
the PHP
manual does this ;-)

Even though I'm not a fan of XML in many situations, I find FPDOC is a really 
useful
and an awesome tool - this time XML fits the job well since the tags are sparse 
(lots
of data between the tags).

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RE: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-03 Thread peter green
> The way to get users do
> more work in writing
> documentation, is to have a comment system right up live on the
> website. Even the PHP
> manual does this ;-)
yeah the accuracy of said information leaves a LOT to be desired though

imo if this is done someone needs to be resposible for looking at the
comments and checking they are factually accurate.

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-03 Thread L505


> > The way to get users do
> > more work in writing
> > documentation, is to have a comment system right up live on the
> > website. Even the PHP
> > manual does this ;-)
> yeah the accuracy of said information leaves a LOT to be desired though
>
> imo if this is done someone needs to be resposible for looking at the
> comments and checking they are factually accurate.
>

For sure. The comments are in a different color than the actual "fixed"
documentation. It will be clearly stated that "these comments are from users 
and are
not necessarily correct. Users make their best effort to make accurate 
comments, but
occasionally there may be an error".

When an major and important comment from a user is submitted, the docs are 
recompiled
with the new changes. This way you get a fixed factual style documentation, 
along
with user contributed comments. The main problem with FPDOC the way it is now, 
is
that no FPC user in their right mind is going to spend 15 minutes - 3 hours
recompiling the entire FPDOCS just to make a small spelling mistake change or 
add a
small and useful comment.

And you think the FPC user is actually going to mail the mailing list with a 
patch to
the docs? Go to all that work and spend hours of his time figuring out how to 
make
and send a patch? People are lazy.. they want to update the documentation right
inside little Internet Explorer, Opera, or Konquerer, or ultimately a thin 
client
;-). I've not actually started working on this project but it's called LufDoc, 
and
I've got all the framework/basics laid out of what the system is, what it will 
do,
and how it will work. I just have too many other things to do right now... I 
think I
will work on this at some point when I'm done fiddling with Syn text editor and 
PSP a
bit more.

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread Mark de Wever
On Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 06:13:30PM +0100, Michalis Kamburelis wrote:
> Mark de Wever wrote:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >I like to put a lot of comment in the source and I would like fpdoc to
> >output this comment into the output files. I wrote a small patch to do
> >this with types, it puts all the comment in front of a type declaration 
> >into the output html as section "Comment text". 
> >
> 
> (This is kind of shameless self promotion, since I took the PasDoc 
> projects this year: )
> 
> If you want to get documentation generated from comments in your source 
> code, PasDoc may be a better tool for you. See [http://pasdoc.sf.net/].
>
I just looked into pasdoc and it looks promising, I'm testing it at the
moment.

Mark
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread Michael Van Canneyt


On Sat, 3 Dec 2005, L505 wrote:

>
>
> > Florian Klaempfl schrieb:
> > >
> > > Why ;)? Indeed, if you want generated docs from comments, better use 
> > > pasdoc.
> >
> > the source scanner used by fpDoc supports reading of comments for quite
> > some time; but as I already told you (or was it Mattias?), the final
> > support in fpDoc is still missing.
> > If there is really interest in this feature, I will have a look at it.
> > (And no, I didn't inspect the sent patch yet.)
> > Any more opinions? Important, not so important?
> >
>
>
> I think comments will be useful and important for developer versions of the
> documentation. Users may not care about the comments in the source code, but 
> it will
> be really useful for a "developer version" of the docs. Many times I write 
> comments
> in the code describing what the code does, so this comment feature in FPDOC 
> would
> help us make developer documentation clearer (users reading the docs, may not 
> care
> about comments so much).
>
> Kind of unrelated, but I'll be working on a CGI program that taps on top of 
> the FPDOC
> generated HTML files and allows users to make notes and comments via their web
> browser underneath the help documents. The way to get users do more work in 
> writing
> documentation, is to have a comment system right up live on the website. Even 
> the PHP
> manual does this ;-)

Please make sure that the fpdoc commenting logic is clearly separated from
the CGI logic. This way your changes can maybe be incorporates in the FPC
sources and website.

The end goal is a CGI system which creates HTML on the fly straight from
sources and XML documentation.

>
> Even though I'm not a fan of XML in many situations, I find FPDOC is a really 
> useful
> and an awesome tool - this time XML fits the job well since the tags are 
> sparse (lots
> of data between the tags).

We also like to think so ;-)

Michael.
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread L505
> Please make sure that the fpdoc commenting logic is clearly separated from
> the CGI logic. This way your changes can maybe be incorporates in the FPC
> sources and website.

Yup that's what I planned on doing to modularize development..  A separate 
database
of user comments will be "included" below the permanent FPDOC HTML 
documentation. The
permanent documentation (or at least compiled, not exactly permanent) will exist
separately from the database of user comments. This way none of the existing 
FPDOC
source code needs to be changed. Only the CGI program gets installed on a 
server and
it includes each FPDOC HTML page as if it were a PHP include file or a php 
Read(). Of
course I'm not using PHP, so in Pascal terms.. WebFileOut().

We can have documentation mirrors via XML feeds.. but since I don't like XML so 
much
I'd actually consider spitting out an SQL dump or an SDS (simple data storage) 
dump,
or a CSV (comma delimitted) dump of the user comments. The user comments could 
be
parsed by freepascal.org by getting the CSV dump or SQL dump just like an RSS 
feed
does. In addition to live dumps, just a download of the current database dump 
will be
available.

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread Daniël Mantione


Op Sun, 4 Dec 2005, schreef L505:

> > Please make sure that the fpdoc commenting logic is clearly separated from
> > the CGI logic. This way your changes can maybe be incorporates in the FPC
> > sources and website.
> 
> Yup that's what I planned on doing to modularize development..  A separate 
> database
> of user comments will be "included" below the permanent FPDOC HTML 
> documentation. The
> permanent documentation (or at least compiled, not exactly permanent) will 
> exist
> separately from the database of user comments. This way none of the existing 
> FPDOC
> source code needs to be changed. Only the CGI program gets installed on a 
> server and
> it includes each FPDOC HTML page as if it were a PHP include file or a php 
> Read(). Of
> course I'm not using PHP, so in Pascal terms.. WebFileOut().
> 
> We can have documentation mirrors via XML feeds.. but since I don't like XML 
> so much
> I'd actually consider spitting out an SQL dump or an SDS (simple data 
> storage) dump,
> or a CSV (comma delimitted) dump of the user comments. The user comments 
> could be
> parsed by freepascal.org by getting the CSV dump or SQL dump just like an RSS 
> feed
> does. In addition to live dumps, just a download of the current database dump 
> will be
> available.

Did you miss something?

On the FPC homepage:
- Click "on-line documentation"
- Click "documentation table of contents with comments"
- Click "Add a comment"

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread L505
> Did you miss something?

> On the FPC homepage:
> - Click "on-line documentation"
> - Click "documentation table of contents with comments"
> - Click "Add a comment"

I think we went over this before. I was talking about the FPDOC "online 
reference"
documents, actually. I think you are talking about the "online documentation" 
which
is different than the online reference? I usually read the FPDOC documents, not 
the
"Online-documentation" Tex generated ones. I do read the "Online" Tex generated 
ones
sometimes, but most of the time I'm running back and forth to the actual FPDOC 
"unit
references".

In any case, the "online document" comment system doesn't work optimally the 
way it
currently is on those online documents you speak of, either.. because all the 
mirrors
out there usually have a higher page rank on google, and the mirrors don't have 
any
comment system. So I end up reading the documentation at another domain name, 
where
there are no option for me to add comments quickly. We need a syndication system
anyway, where universities and other mirrors can parse User comments from a 
database
or Rss feed.

It doesn't really matter right now at this moment, though. I've talked about 
this for
ages and I never seem to get my point across fully. What I'll do is run this 
system I
speak of on Z505.com domain, and you'll see how it works there. I won't suggest 
that
freepascal.org take a look into it until I have a real world working example to 
show
you what I mean. I will also be documenting other things like the entire 
Windows.pas
file, which freepascal.org does not document for good reasons.  That's the 
Windows
API reference project for Delphi and Freepascal programmers. I have the server 
space
and bandwidth for thousands of documents so I have no problem hosting all of 
this.
Again, I don't want to sound all talk and no action here.. so I think I'll save
discussing my ideas until proven on Z505.

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread Mark de Wever
On Sun, Dec 04, 2005 at 12:11:20AM +0100, Sebastian Günther wrote:
> Florian Klaempfl schrieb:
> > 
> > Why ;)? Indeed, if you want generated docs from comments, better use pasdoc.
> 
> the source scanner used by fpDoc supports reading of comments for quite
> some time; but as I already told you (or was it Mattias?), the final
> support in fpDoc is still missing.
> If there is really interest in this feature, I will have a look at it.
> (And no, I didn't inspect the sent patch yet.)
> Any more opinions? Important, not so important?
>
For now I switched to pasdoc, since it fulfills my shortterm needs. But
I still would be interested to see this option in fpDoc. 

Mark de Wever
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread Daniël Mantione


Op Sun, 4 Dec 2005, schreef L505:

> > Did you miss something?
> 
> > On the FPC homepage:
> > - Click "on-line documentation"
> > - Click "documentation table of contents with comments"
> > - Click "Add a comment"
> 
> I think we went over this before. I was talking about the FPDOC "online 
> reference"
> documents, actually. I think you are talking about the "online documentation" 
> which
> is different than the online reference? I usually read the FPDOC documents, 
> not the
> "Online-documentation" Tex generated ones. I do read the "Online" Tex 
> generated ones
> sometimes, but most of the time I'm running back and forth to the actual 
> FPDOC "unit
> references".

We have only "Online documentation". Some of it is generared from Tex, 
some from fpdoc. I guess you refer to the RTL documentation, which is the 
portion generated by fpdoc and the comment system is active on it. You may be 
confused that the URL looks like a normal html file (which they are on 
disk), but the comments are automatically added by the static pages module 
that is responsible for the comments. It can be switched on and off for 
any html page, and we can hide/modify/delete any comment.

> In any case, the "online document" comment system doesn't work optimally the 
> way it
> currently is on those online documents you speak of, either.. because all the 
> mirrors
> out there usually have a higher page rank on google, and the mirrors don't 
> have any
> comment system. So I end up reading the documentation at another domain name, 
> where
> there are no option for me to add comments quickly. We need a syndication 
> system
> anyway, where universities and other mirrors can parse User comments from a 
> database
> or Rss feed.

The purpose of a mirror is that it reduces the load on the main site. If 
they access a database of the main site, or an RSS feed, you are putting 
load on the main site. So you would need to do off-line synchronisation, 
it sounds very complicated to me and needs to be set up by people who are 
not necessarily be willing (or don't even have the knowledge) to spend a 
lot of time in setting up complicated stuff.

It is quite likely the FPC webpages will become less static html in the 
future. We could help mirrors to install dynamic stuff, but my 
experience is mirror maintainers simply want to install a bunch of html 
files, and nothing else.

> It doesn't really matter right now at this moment, though. I've talked about 
> this for
> ages and I never seem to get my point across fully. What I'll do is run this 
> system I
> speak of on Z505.com domain, and you'll see how it works there. I won't 
> suggest that
> freepascal.org take a look into it until I have a real world working example 
> to show
> you what I mean. I will also be documenting other things like the entire 
> Windows.pas
> file, which freepascal.org does not document for good reasons.  That's the 
> Windows
> API reference project for Delphi and Freepascal programmers. I have the 
> server space
> and bandwidth for thousands of documents so I have no problem hosting all of 
> this.
> Again, I don't want to sound all talk and no action here.. so I think I'll 
> save
> discussing my ideas until proven on Z505.

Well, if you are pointing at the PHP manuals I can say we have 100% of 
that functionality right now. If you want to write such a system in 
Pascal, go ahead, I won't stop you, the more Pascal code the better.

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-04 Thread Sebastian Günther
L505 schrieb:
> 
> The main problem with FPDOC the way it is now, is
> that no FPC user in their right mind is going to spend 15 minutes - 3 hours
> recompiling the entire FPDOCS just to make a small spelling mistake change or 
> add a
> small and useful comment.

Yes I know...
I have quite concrete plans in mind for a kind of 'next generation
fpDoc' (some nice and cute extensions, e.g. for online editing...), but
I have to finish some other things first.


- Sebastian
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-16 Thread L505


> > Did you miss something?
>
> > On the FPC homepage:
> > - Click "on-line documentation"
> > - Click "documentation table of contents with comments"
> > - Click "Add a comment"
>

I think I finally figured out your little comment system for the units 
generated with
FPDOC that I seemed to magically find today:

http://community.freepascal.org:1/docs-html/rtl/index.html

The comment system *is* (and has been, for how long I don't know) in place - 
even if
it took me 50 years to find. The major problem is no one reads those documents, 
or
can find them easily.  People read what is indexed by google:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/

I think the reason I've never landed on a comment document page is because 
google
treats them as duplicates and doesn't index them. That, and as I said before, 
the
fact that we have so many FPC mirrors out there with the exact same content 
makes
google think there is no need to index the documents with comments.

I'd force the comments onto people - they can't do any harm. Why offer the docs
without comments? It'd be better for google, but not necessarily better for 
those
people who don't like comments under the documents (who wouldn't?).

Sorry if I couldn't find them - but if I can't find them, who can? (unless I'm a
clutz, which is highly possible).

--
L505

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-16 Thread Michael Van Canneyt



On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, L505 wrote:





Did you miss something?



On the FPC homepage:
- Click "on-line documentation"
- Click "documentation table of contents with comments"
- Click "Add a comment"




I think I finally figured out your little comment system for the units 
generated with
FPDOC that I seemed to magically find today:

http://community.freepascal.org:1/docs-html/rtl/index.html

The comment system *is* (and has been, for how long I don't know) in place - 
even if
it took me 50 years to find. The major problem is no one reads those documents, 
or
can find them easily.  People read what is indexed by google:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/

I think the reason I've never landed on a comment document page is because 
google
treats them as duplicates and doesn't index them. That, and as I said before, 
the
fact that we have so many FPC mirrors out there with the exact same content 
makes
google think there is no need to index the documents with comments.

I'd force the comments onto people - they can't do any harm. Why offer the docs
without comments? It'd be better for google, but not necessarily better for 
those
people who don't like comments under the documents (who wouldn't?).


The author, for one :-)

The commenting system puts extra load on the server which I don't want.

Michael.
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread L
> under the documents (who wouldn't?).
>
> The author, for one :-)
>
> The commenting system puts extra load on the server which I don't want.


Amazon.com has a patent on one click shopping, I believe. I think I know why.

Well, with the FindPart function, back 7 months ago.. I found an error in the 
docs
regarding the Result/Return value. I reported it - but was too lazy to submit a
patch. And guess what, the findpart error in the documentation is still there 
today,
7 months later.

Wait a minute - *lazy* is actually the wrong word. Forget I said lazy. I'm far 
from
lazy. I'm a hard worker. And yet my animal instinct still tells me that making 
a doc
patch via the current setup, or adding a comment via the current setup, is not
natural. My instinct, as an animal, is to leave the error in the docs and move 
on to
other things. It's not one click shopping.

My instinct, as an animal, when I arrive at the PHP website, is to correct the 
docs
if I see an error. It's one click shopping.

--
L505
Mammal

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Vincent Snijders

L wrote:

under the documents (who wouldn't?).

The author, for one :-)

The commenting system puts extra load on the server which I don't want.




Amazon.com has a patent on one click shopping, I believe. I think I know why.

Well, with the FindPart function, back 7 months ago.. I found an error in the 
docs
regarding the Result/Return value. I reported it - but was too lazy to submit a
patch. And guess what, the findpart error in the documentation is still there 
today,
7 months later.

Wait a minute - *lazy* is actually the wrong word. Forget I said lazy. I'm far 
from
lazy. I'm a hard worker. And yet my animal instinct still tells me that making 
a doc
patch via the current setup, or adding a comment via the current setup, is not
natural. My instinct, as an animal, is to leave the error in the docs and move 
on to
other things. It's not one click shopping.



But if you only leave a comment, it still isn't fixed in the source (of the 
documentation). This means next release still will contain, because the comments are 
not part of the distributed docs.


Vincent.
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Michael Van Canneyt



On Sun, 18 Dec 2005, L wrote:


under the documents (who wouldn't?).

The author, for one :-)

The commenting system puts extra load on the server which I don't want.



Amazon.com has a patent on one click shopping, I believe. I think I know why.

Well, with the FindPart function, back 7 months ago.. I found an error in the 
docs
regarding the Result/Return value. I reported it - but was too lazy to submit a
patch. And guess what, the findpart error in the documentation is still there 
today,
7 months later.

Wait a minute - *lazy* is actually the wrong word. Forget I said lazy. I'm far 
from
lazy. I'm a hard worker. And yet my animal instinct still tells me that making 
a doc
patch via the current setup, or adding a comment via the current setup, is not
natural. My instinct, as an animal, is to leave the error in the docs and move 
on to
other things. It's not one click shopping.

My instinct, as an animal, when I arrive at the PHP website, is to correct the 
docs
if I see an error. It's one click shopping.


Amazon is a company which can add servers at will.

The FPC servers are paid out of our own pockets, so things as 'load' etc.
form a big restriction.

If we had a separate server 'docs.freepascal.org' then there was no problem.
But we don't, so 'one click shopping' is not an option at this point.

Michael.
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho
On 12/19/05, Michael Van Canneyt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Amazon is a company which can add servers at will.
>
> The FPC servers are paid out of our own pockets, so things as 'load' etc.
> form a big restriction.

By the way I think this is missing a lot on Free Pascal.

You guys could start calling enterprises to support the project. Have
a meeting, present the project and then ask for hardware / money to
pay development. I know many project witch greatly benefited from
this.

I have some experience with this kind of thing and I can tell you that
this ins´t as hard as it sounds.

Felipe
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Michael Van Canneyt



On Mon, 19 Dec 2005, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote:


On 12/19/05, Michael Van Canneyt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Amazon is a company which can add servers at will.

The FPC servers are paid out of our own pockets, so things as 'load' etc.
form a big restriction.


By the way I think this is missing a lot on Free Pascal.

You guys could start calling enterprises to support the project. Have
a meeting, present the project and then ask for hardware / money to
pay development. I know many project witch greatly benefited from
this.

I have some experience with this kind of thing and I can tell you that
this ins´t as hard as it sounds.


It's not so much the 'hard' that is the problem.

As with the PR thing: The core developers really don't have time for this.
It takes a lot of effort: prepare, go there (costs again money), follow-
up. You need some kind of legal entity etc etc etc.

We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
along these lines. It takes long-range commitment, which is probably
what scares many people off...

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Jonas Maebe


On 19 dec 2005, at 14:01, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote:


You guys could start calling enterprises to support the project. Have
a meeting, present the project and then ask for hardware / money to
pay development. I know many project witch greatly benefited from
this.


And I know that most (if not all) of us simply don't have the time to  
invest into that. I also don't think any of us would be able to quit  
his day job and get paid full time to work on FPC. I for one wouldn't  
even want that, it would stop being fun...



Jonas
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho
On 12/19/05, Michael Van Canneyt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It's not so much the 'hard' that is the problem.
>
> As with the PR thing: The core developers really don't have time for this.
> It takes a lot of effort: prepare, go there (costs again money), follow-
> up. You need some kind of legal entity etc etc etc.

Would they like to have time for this?

Look at my experience. I work for the University of São Paulo. I am
not developing the Virtual Magnifying Glass
(http://www.braillevirtual.fe.usp.br/temporario/magnifier.png) as a
hobby, althought it is so much fun that I would. I am a *paid open
source developer*.

One of the guys that work with me called Microsoft and one of their
directors went to where we work to talk about another project we
develop. We didn´t even had to go there. We did not prepare a formal
presentation, we only had a reunion. He even offered software /
hardware to sponsor us! The same with Macromedia.

Companies like to have their names on projects with big visibility,
and that´s where the marketing thing comes.

You need to find companies interested in Pascal and companies
interested in Open Source and then ask them for support.

I would start with IBM. Many companies support open source. Google
does. HP does. Apache, the linux kernel, all started as free time
projects and ended up with paid developers.

If you guys wouldn´t like to code for Free Pascal as your main
activity perhaps you can ask the enterprises to hire someone else to
help. Similar to this is:

* Sending a propolsal for Google "Summer of Code" for them to pay
someone to help develop Free Pascal.

* Send a propolsal for IBM to pay propaganda for you as part of the
Linux on Power project http://www.linuxonpower.com/

etc, etc, etc, etc

> We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
> never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
> along these lines. It takes long-range commitment, which is probably
> what scares many people off...

I can even send propolsas for IBM / Google / etc for them on those
projects (althought I need you guys to formally support this things),
but reunions and things like that have to be done by someone from
"inside". You can´t just say: I like free pascal and I would like you
to sponsor it. You have to be a developer to ask for that.

--
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-19 Thread Jonas Maebe


On 19 dec 2005, at 14:28, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote:


* Send a propolsal for IBM to pay propaganda for you as part of the
Linux on Power project http://www.linuxonpower.com/


That already happened, and thanks to that we now have a ppc64 version  
of the compiler.



Jonas
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-22 Thread L

> We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
> never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
> along these lines. It takes long-range commitment, which is probably
> what scares many people off...


I've volunteered to help, but I think there are too many conflicts with what I 
would
use to program a website versus the current system in place. All I heard was "we
don't need any concepts or ideas, we need people to help" But I did offer to 
help -
don't deny that.

This is why time after time I keep recommending more pascal users to make their 
own
websites. Many of us don't have the same website engines or choice of website
databases. Better 50 users create 50 high quality websites on Pascal than 50 
users
all arguing about what the engine behind the doc system is going to be.

We are discussing an open documentation system that does not require and SVN 
account
or patching. The whole idea of an open documentation system that does not 
require an
SVN account, is that you do not need to "stick your neck in" - you only need to
stick your pinky finger in!  You are proving my point by saying I must "stick my
neck in" .  I shouldn't have to stick my neck in. It should be one click 
shopping.
For updating the compiler code itself? Yes, that you should definitely have to 
stick
your neck in. That is more complicated, for sure.  It's got nothing to do with 
PR
right now, really. The popularity might come as a side effect to a good manual. 
But
I'm not saying it is the reason Pascal isn't as popular as C. i.e., I'm not 
pushing
PR here.. that's not what I'm getting at.

My only fear of building a documentation engine on my domain, is that I will 
reinvent
the wheel. I'd rather make improvements or suggestions to the current doc 
system in
place, so people don't have to run to 60 different websites to read different
documentation engines out there. It's not that I'm afraid of grunt work - I can 
throw
together a system - but I'd rather not if it will cause more harm, causing 
users to
run around to my doc site, freepascal's doc site, another doc site, and another 
doc
site, etc.

You do have to have discussions, before you implement something big like this. 
I'm
not just talking out my my fat mouth here. I'm honestly fearing that having 
more than
one documentation engine out there will cause some harm, instead of some good. 
That,
and of course I don't program in PHP any more, so I may not even be of help to 
the
current freepascal engine anyway (and last I looked, I couldn't see the PHP 
code on
SVN anyway - just html. Maybe I missed it).

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-22 Thread L



>
> > We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
> > never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
> > along these lines.

I've looked at people in charge many times, but I've never seen those in charge
sticking their head out telling me directly, with real instructions how I can 
help,
along with my
SVN password, what the rule are with what I'm allowed to help with, etc.

All I've  (we've) seen so far is the people in charge criticising any incoming
suggestions or concepts. I'm no lazy man, I'm a grunt worker. I stick my neck 
in when
I have precise directions on how to and what I'm allowed to.  I think there are 
more
conflicts here going on then just people not sticking their neck in. Constantly
critisizing people for not sticking their neck in won't really help. Sending 
them an
email questioning what they would like to help, where their svn password is, 
under
what conditions , etc. will help.

At times I find the responses of the FPC lists negative rather than encouraging.

Let's have collabritive discussion with precise directions on where I and 
others can
help, in what programming languages, with what restrictions - rather than 
arguments
and quick judgements such as "ahh, he won't help, otherwise he would have 
uploaded it
already".

Uploaded where? Under what circumstances? With what password? With what 
language? I'm
sorry, but it's not just as simple as a patch, with this documentation system. 
With a
compiler change, it is sometimes as simple as a patch. This is not a compiler 
change,
this one. This isn't a patch. Plus, I dont' see any way to make patches to the 
PHP
code anyway - as stated in previous mail regarding only seeing HTML on svn. 
Plus,
even if a patch were possible, I don't think it would be allowed in anyway - 
because
my suggestions have been determined as no-goes already. So if our discussion 
has led
us to the conclusion that we won't be implementing what I thought up, why 
bother me
doing any grunt work anyway? You see, you do have to have discussions before 
doing
grunt work - because if I would have done the grunt work, the patch of mine 
would
have been disregarded anyway!

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-22 Thread Michael Van Canneyt



On Wed, 21 Dec 2005, L wrote:


We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
along these lines. It takes long-range commitment, which is probably
what scares many people off...


You do have to have discussions, before you implement something big like this. 
I'm
not just talking out my my fat mouth here. I'm honestly fearing that having 
more than
one documentation engine out there will cause some harm, instead of some good. 
That,
and of course I don't program in PHP any more, so I may not even be of help to 
the
current freepascal engine anyway (and last I looked, I couldn't see the PHP 
code on
SVN anyway - just html. Maybe I missed it).


You probably did. The main site is indeed a static site.

Only the directories html/bugs and html/contrib contain PHP code.
They are scheduled for rewriting in FPC. (in fact, you'll see the code
for the pre-PHP cgi website in those directories as wel)

Michael.
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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-22 Thread Daniël Mantione


Op Wed, 21 Dec 2005, schreef L:

> 
> > We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
> > never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
> > along these lines. It takes long-range commitment, which is probably
> > what scares many people off...
> 
> 
> I've volunteered to help, but I think there are too many conflicts with what 
> I would
> use to program a website versus the current system in place. All I heard was 
> "we
> don't need any concepts or ideas, we need people to help" But I did offer to 
> help -
> don't deny that.

Exactly, we cannot have a lot of people wanting to throw eveything away 
and their own thing. That'll cause a horrible mess. We are flexible 
however. For a good plan, that doesn't conflict too much, help will be 
more than welcome.

> This is why time after time I keep recommending more pascal users to 
> make their own
> websites. Many of us don't have the same website engines or choice of website
> databases. Better 50 users create 50 high quality websites on Pascal than 50 
> users
> all arguing about what the engine behind the doc system is going to be.

Yes, but people need to work together. An example of a failed site is 
www.friends-of-fpc.org. The idea is good, but there is only one man behind 
it, which caused the website never to have attractive content. A very good 
example how to do it is pascalgamedevelopment. I would definately like to 
see more of those sites. Most PR should be done outside freepascal.org.

> We are discussing an open documentation system that does not require and SVN 
> account
> or patching. The whole idea of an open documentation system that does not 
> require an
> SVN account, is that you do not need to "stick your neck in" - you only need 
> to
> stick your pinky finger in!  You are proving my point by saying I must "stick 
> my
> neck in" .  I shouldn't have to stick my neck in. It should be one click 
> shopping.
> For updating the compiler code itself? Yes, that you should definitely have 
> to stick
> your neck in. That is more complicated, for sure.  It's got nothing to do 
> with PR
> right now, really. The popularity might come as a side effect to a good 
> manual. But
> I'm not saying it is the reason Pascal isn't as popular as C. i.e., I'm not 
> pushing
> PR here.. that's not what I'm getting at.
> 
> My only fear of building a documentation engine on my domain, is that I will 
> reinvent
> the wheel. I'd rather make improvements or suggestions to the current doc 
> system in
> place, so people don't have to run to 60 different websites to read different
> documentation engines out there. It's not that I'm afraid of grunt work - I 
> can throw
> together a system - but I'd rather not if it will cause more harm, causing 
> users to
> run around to my doc site, freepascal's doc site, another doc site, and 
> another doc
> site, etc.

Indeed, writing fpc documentation outside freepascal.org is definately not 
a good idea. You want the community to help writing documentation. That 
is a good idea, we're evaluating the options to do that as well, but not 
very easily implemented, so should be a well thought out plan. Help is 
welcome here.

> You do have to have discussions, before you implement something big like 
> this. I'm
> not just talking out my my fat mouth here. I'm honestly fearing that having 
> more than
> one documentation engine out there will cause some harm, instead of some 
> good. That,
> and of course I don't program in PHP any more, so I may not even be of help 
> to the
> current freepascal engine anyway (and last I looked, I couldn't see the PHP 
> code on
> SVN anyway - just html. Maybe I missed it).

The only part of the web site that uses php is the bug tracker. The new 
bug tracker will be written in Free Pascal.

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Re: [fpc-devel] [RFC] fpdoc output comment from the source

2005-12-22 Thread Daniël Mantione


Op Wed, 21 Dec 2005, schreef L:

> 
> 
> 
> >
> > > We've looked at the people on the mailing list many times, but we've
> > > never seen people sticking out their neck and actually doing something
> > > along these lines.
> 
> I've looked at people in charge many times, but I've never seen those in 
> charge
> sticking their head out telling me directly, with real instructions how I can 
> help,
> along with my
> SVN password, what the rule are with what I'm allowed to help with, etc.

Our policy is that we give people SVN access after they have contributed 
code a few times. Perhaps it is a bit annoying, but we need to be a bit 
conservative here to prevent too many people messing with FPC's code. 
However, it is not very hard to gain SVN access, usually we are quite open 
to it.

> All I've  (we've) seen so far is the people in charge criticising any incoming
> suggestions or concepts.

We need to, not everything that can be done should be done, and a lot of 
proposals are about "let's start from scratch and do it better".

> I'm no lazy man, I'm a grunt worker. I stick my neck in when
> I have precise directions on how to and what I'm allowed to.  I think there 
> are more
> conflicts here going on then just people not sticking their neck in. 
> Constantly
> critisizing people for not sticking their neck in won't really help. Sending 
> them an
> email questioning what they would like to help, where their svn password is, 
> under
> what conditions , etc. will help.
> 
> At times I find the responses of the FPC lists negative rather than 
> encouraging.
> 
> Let's have collabritive discussion with precise directions on where I and 
> others can
> help, in what programming languages, with what restrictions - rather than 
> arguments
> and quick judgements such as "ahh, he won't help, otherwise he would have 
> uploaded it
> already".
> 
> Uploaded where? Under what circumstances? With what password? With what 
> language? I'm
> sorry, but it's not just as simple as a patch, with this documentation 
> system. With a
> compiler change, it is sometimes as simple as a patch. This is not a compiler 
> change,
> this one. This isn't a patch. Plus, I dont' see any way to make patches to 
> the PHP
> code anyway - as stated in previous mail regarding only seeing HTML on svn. 
> Plus,
> even if a patch were possible, I don't think it would be allowed in anyway - 
> because
> my suggestions have been determined as no-goes already. So if our discussion 
> has led
> us to the conclusion that we won't be implementing what I thought up, why 
> bother me
> doing any grunt work anyway? You see, you do have to have discussions before 
> doing
> grunt work - because if I would have done the grunt work, the patch of mine 
> would
> have been disregarded anyway!

That is way too sceptical. Yes, you need to have discussions, if it is 
a good idea. However, if your proposal is to write an enchancement to the 
site, or a cleanup, or whatever it won't be taken so skeptically. 
Proposing features that already exist, like a commenting system, makes 
people skeptical, though.

Daniël___
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