Hello,

I'd like to share my opinioin about CakePHP's documentation, from a newbie's
point of view. In short,  i dont' find bad or unusable :
- the Manual is ok .  Skimming throught it and following the tutorial
gave me some
  basic knowledge about how cake works. And, more importantly, convinced
  me that CakePHP is a good path to follow.
- i missed the ability to download the manual as a single zip file ,
for studying
  it offline.
- the API is helpful, but sometimes the parameters of the methods are explained
  in a minimalistic way. This is probably because the api is generated from the
  sources. The good  part is that there are links to the php code, so
it's possible
  to browse the code trying to see how does it work.

For example, please try to imagine for a minute that you are a beginner and you
come across the description of the method :
[api : 
http://api.cakephp.org/1.2/classModel.html#6b1a38f7a8ddb61cfa8539734b4d6430
]
Model::bindModel ($params, $reset = true)

Bind model associations on the fly.
If $reset is false, association will not be reset to the originals
defined in the model
[/api]

The $params argument is not explained , except that "it's an array".
It's not exactly
obvious what can be put into that array...

So, it would be very good to have a verbose API ,  with more detailed
descriptions
and maybe even some examples.  But i realize that it would take a lot of work to
add details to all those comments at the beginning of the methods , an activity
that is probably not the most exciting thing to do ...


Other sources on information :
- the irc : it's real-time,  but disorganized .  I find it difficult
to follow several
   different conversations taking place at the same time.
- the google group : very nice. I wish i had realised it's existance
sooner. I like it
   much more than the irc channel, because I have the time to compose the
   question or answer.  And it has the searchable archives ;-)


In conclusion,  the idea that "the documentation sucks" is innacurate and not
helpful .


-- 
Adrian Maier

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