Re: [nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-23 Thread Jeffrey McManus
--- Scott Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Right now the Task References are created by NDoc
 via the userdoc target.

The product of this process doesn't seem to be getting
checked in. The net result is, when you check out the
docs from CVS, the core part of the documentation (the
tasks reference) isn't available. What would it take
to make this happen?

Jeffrey

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Re: [nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-23 Thread Jeffrey McManus
I understand that it shouldn't be edited directly, but
I think it should at least be checked in, because it
represents part of the distributable package of the
application. One objective of source code is to be
able to view, at a glance, the state of an application
(including its distributable packages; i.e. its
documentation) at any point in time. Whether it was
generated by a human or by an automated process
shouldn't matter. If somebody needs to re-create some
arbitrary build three years from now to replace it on
a production system that standardized on it, they're
going to be hosed because they won't be able to get
documentation that matches the build they have.

The practical problem that I (and lots of others, in
all likelihood) are having is, without a current
snapshot of the state of the task lists, there is no
way to get a reference to the latest tasks, short of
re-building the project, which (it seems to me) you
shouldn't have to do just to get docs.

-J.

--- Scott Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 It should not be checked in. Once it is generated,
 it is stale and it is not
 the source of documentation anyway.
 
 Why do you want it checked into source control as
 html? (it should not be
 edited in that form)
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Jeffrey McManus [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 2:51 PM
 
 
  --- Scott Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   Right now the Task References are created by
 NDoc
   via the userdoc target.
 
  The product of this process doesn't seem to be
 getting
  checked in. The net result is, when you check out
 the
  docs from CVS, the core part of the documentation
 (the
  tasks reference) isn't available. What would it
 take
  to make this happen?
 


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Re: [nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-23 Thread Jeffrey McManus
--- Scott Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 The source in cvs does represent the documentation
 at any point, not the
 other way around. What your suggesting would lead to
 ever more dissimilarity
 between a build and the docs in the system. We would
 need to check in new
 docs whenever a source file is changed! That is just
 wrong.

If only there were some kind of automated tool to do
that...  :)

I'm accustomed to thinking of docs as a part of the
deliverable package and as such, something that should
be checked in. I'm willing to accept that not
everybody does it that way, though.

Maybe working backwards from my original problem would
shed light on this. Let's take an example...right now
in the nightly builds there is support for a tag
called 'nunit2'. How would someone get access to
documentation on this?

-J.

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Re: [nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-23 Thread Jeffrey McManus
 Having docs checked in makes sense if they are
 edited as html. Ours are 
 generated. We should be updating the website
 regularly with the latest 
 docs. Perhaps the nightlies should include this too.

Updating the website with documentation on features
that aren't in the latest stable build might lead to
confusion among people who use (for example) 0.7 and
expect what's on the site to match version 0.7.

Sticking the latest docs in the nightlies is an
excellent idea though.

Reiterating my original question lest it get lost in
the shuffle: is there any way to view HTML
documentation on 0.8 tasks today short of rebuilding
the project from source?

-J.

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Re: [nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-23 Thread Jeffrey McManus
--- Scott Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Oh. It sounds so simple, but this lever of
 automation we do not have. It
 would require cvs polling, or a linux build
 environment on sourceforge.net.

Yep, I didn't mean it seriously -- hence the smiley
after the suggestion. (Although...I'm not super
familiar with it, but doesn't this Draco.NET thing do
cvs polling?)

 I really don't want to hinder you from helping,
 maybe so other people can
 comment with their opinions here. I think that you
 and I have very different
 ideas about what should be in source control.

Let's chuck my original put-docs-in-source-control
suggestion; it's a red herring. I just think that the
core of the documentation (the task reference) should
match the current snapshot and be somehow available.
If auto-putting it into the nightly snap isn't viable,
then figuring out a way to make all the docs of the
current snap somehow generally available without
having to download source and do a build is the
desired outcome. (I agree that doing a release would
be the optimum solution, but in the absence of that,
it seems like there should be a way to get interim
docs on the version that's being worked on. Right?)

We're absolutely in agreement that making it easy to
contribute is a valuable goal. Last night I (a CVS
novice) was able to fairly quickly use CVS to suck
down the current source and HTML docs. I made a pass
through all of them, correcting spelling mistakes and
adding content here and there using my tool of choice
(which happens to be Dreamweaver, but could have been
anything). It took an hour, I didn't have to learn
anything new and as a result it was easy. (Although at
this point, I have no idea what to do with the product
of my work.)

-J.

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[nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-22 Thread Jeffrey McManus
There's an HTML error at the bottom of the page
describing the 'nunit' task
(http://nant.sourceforge.net/help/tasks/nunittask.html).
This error occurs in both IE 6.0 and Mozilla
(Phoenix). It looks like the page wants to document an
attribute of the nunit task, but it got munged
somehow? Anyway.

Does the project have someone whose job it is to
specifically address documentation issues? If not, I'd
be happy to help out.

Jeffrey

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Re: [nant-dev] documentation error

2003-01-22 Thread Jeffrey McManus
I'm happy to contribute as much as I can to docs; I've
synched everything up with CVS and I'll start looking
at them tonight. With your permission, one of things
I'd like to start thinking about is a short
introductory blurb/doc that introduces the concept of
a build tool at a high level for experienced
developers who have never used a build tool (a profile
that will apply to many Microsoft tools developers, I
suspect).

With respect to XMLification of the docs, I've done
this a few times before, and it has consistently
taught me one thing -- frequently, the amount of time
that developers spend managing the XML (fidding with
tags, getting the elements correct, etc.) exceeds the
benefits. I say this as a huge XML proponent who uses
XML on a near-daily basis. But generally for
documentation my watchword is make it as easy for
people to contribute as possible. Whether it's in
HTML, XML, or on the back of a cocktail napkin,
getting good information is more important than what
format it's in.

Looking at your source, it looks like you're using
inline XML comments already, which is great. I wonder
if it would be OK, at least for now, if we just keep
the HTML documentation in HTML and transform the
inline XML comments into HTML/PDF/CHM/whatever, using
the inline code comments emitted by the compiler? Does
this sound insane? To me, this seems like it would be
much less work -- at the end of the day if you want to
(for example) convert HTML pages to PDF you could
easily do so without bothering with an intervening XML
step.

One question -- what's the status of the tasks page
(\nant\doc\help\tasks\index.html)? It's a dead link in
the source I just checked out; is it going to be
autogenned from the source at some point? Should we
maybe stick a placeholder page in there until the real
page is ready?

Jeffrey

--- Scott Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi Jeffrey,
 
 It looks like this has been fixed in cvs. There is
 no help/documenter
 person, but if you would like to help out, there is
 plenty to do :) And we
 would really appreciate it.
 
 The number one thing on my list is to convert the
 docs here
 (http://nant.sourceforge.net/help/index.html;
 excluding the task ref) into
 xml so we can more easily work with it. Then maybe
 we can generate more
 formats of help (like a chm or pdf). Currently these
 documents exist in a
 proprietary format (fogdesk, I think) and are pretty
 hard to do anything
 with but generate html from.
 
 If you need any more explanation, I can help out, or
 someone on the list
 will be able to fill in the details.

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