OpenSource documentation problems

[Adriaan Renting]

>>>Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> 08/31/05 11:59 pm >>> 
|> >I have NEVER seen a closed source application or programming 
|> >language that came with that much documentation and support. 
|> 
|>I'm no fan of Microsoft, but in general, the Win32 API is far 
|>better documented than is Python. (Just don't use the searching 
|>facilities on the MSDev CD's to find the doc; Google it up.) 
| 
|Okay, I was being a little bit tricky here, too.  I said I'd 
|*never seen* better documentation on a closed source application. 
|It's unclear to me whether that means it doesn't exist, or I just 
|can't get hold of it, because it's closed source code. 

In my Windows days I realy liked the Borland documentation, it was way better as the Visual Studio/MSDev docs. Borland C++Builder used to come with a complete rewrite of the Win32 API docs, next to the docs of it's own API. One of the things I realy liked about C++Builder, and haven't found anywhere else*, is that if you push F1 anywhere in your code, it will pop up the help of whatever object/class/function/lib your cursor is sitting on. No need to hunt google or some awkward CD search, just press F1 when you don't remember exactly how to call SetModemParams().
(*I'm not current with the latest MS and Borland offerings)

I still hope Novell will be able to get borland to revive Kylix.

I still think the Python docs aren't realy bad, they could benefit from the addition of a functionality based index like Qt has, like in qt3/doc/html/groups.html. Qt's docs are quite good I think, although I don't have a lot of experience with them yet, I have been able to find what I needed.

Some of my colleagues are quite enthousiastic about Root's documentation: http://root.cern.ch/root/doc/RootDoc.html.