Ed Leafe wrote:
• Documentation: While I've made some progress, we need a ton more. I
believe that exhaustive documentation, in which every single aspect
of the framework is documented, is almost as bad as no docs at all.
What would really help is to explain what sort of help you were
looking for and couldn't find. Chances are that the documentation
doesn't exist, or exists in a place that isn't obvious. If you let me
know what's confusing, or what's lacking, that will be the place for
me to focus on.
There's always a danger of coming over as "demanding" when you answer a
question like this - so if I fall into that trap, please forgive me. I'm
willing to have a go at creating some of these (once I know they don't
already exit), but I suspect I'm still new enough to Dabo that they
would need considerable proof-reading / editing.
Things I would have liked to find in the documentation
(i.e. if they're already there and I just missed them - tell me)
1. An intro to "a typical Dabo app" (i.e. small but not trivial app)
(maybe two - a db one and a non-db one)
i.e. something like the simpleDemo apps, but explaining which parts
are "boilerplate" and which are expected to vary.
2. An overview of the controls, and the *common* things to do with them.
e.g.
To get a single-line text input box, you use a dTextBox
the full list of properties that can be set is (somewhere), but most
of the time you will use
Left, Top, Bottom, Right - to set the location and size
Font_size : to set the size of the text
To get a checkbox, you use a dCheckBox
Checked
Caption
and the events you are likely to care about are
onHit
3. More examples.
I could give up a lot of documentation if there were enough examples,
especially if there were some more intermediate ones (i.e. larger than
simpleDemo, but smaller than CD :-)
4. Intro to dialogs and message box
Which system dialogs are easily available ?
Use of message box, and conveniences such as "areYourSure" ?
5. More examples :-)
6. Written version of the screencasts.
Or similar tutorial text - needn't be a transcription of the
screencasts (in fact, perhaps better if it isn't). Needn't be a highly
detailed "press this button, move the mouse here, ...." tutorial -
screencasts are a better way to get past the first beginning steps - but
should guide a user through the process of creating and/or extending a
small app.
(If screencasts were - indexed, searchable and could be speeded up for
"scanning", we wouldn't need this - but for now it's frustrating to
"know" you saw something about how to do this - and have to watch 50% of
a screencast, in real time, to find it again)
7. More examples.
Maybe something like the demo / samples from wxPython and/or PythonCard
- a range from trivial demos of a single control, to small, real apps.
--
Alex Tweedly http://www.tweedly.net
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