On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 10:48:10AM -0500, Andy Lester wrote:
> > You are the author, so you should know better, than me.
> > Appart from the DESCRIPTION supplied by the Modules you
> > could tell us
> 
> I think that what Andreas is getting after is that the README should
> provide a summary of what the module is and why one would want to use it,
> and maybe the most basic of examples.

I understand why README files are useful to FTPers.  Since I already
endeavor to put that information into the module docs themselves, my
basic problem is one of redundancy.

The only extra information above and beyond what's in the module docs
that I'd throw into a README or INSTALL would be any special
installation instructions.  Since 99% of the time this is just a
parrot of the perlmodinstall man page I usually find it redundant and
don't bother.


Which is why I tried the mod2readme experiment.  If you look at the
README and INSTALL docs for Text::Metaphone those are all
autogenerated from the module itself.  It includes the NAME, SYNOPSIS,
DESCRIPTION and AUTHOR sections of the docs along with basic
installation instructions, a pointer to perlmodinstall and a note
about any extras you might need.  In Text::Metaphone's case it sees
the XS and notes that you'll need a C compiler.

I never took mod2readme beyond a proof of concept.


-- 

Michael G. Schwern   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>    http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl Quality Assurance      <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>         Kwalitee Is Job One
conway: unit of mind expansion.  One Conway == ~20 lines of Perl code
  found in $CPAN/authors/id/D/DC/DCONWAY, which gives the sensation
  of your brain being wrapped around a brick, with kiwi juice squeezed
  on top.
        -- Ziggy

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