On 7/31/07, Michael Van Canneyt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Also, someone who comes on the freepascal website for the first time can
> > very easily get the impression that FPC lacks any kind of database access.
> > Just try it for yourself:
> > - imagine that that you know nothing about fpc
> > - go to www.freepascal.org
> > - go to "Documentation"
> > - open any of the "reference" docs.  You'll find nothing about sqldb,
> > mysql, firebird or postgres...
>
> That is because there is no reference documentation for these units.
> The reference documentation is exactly that: reference documentation.
> If none is available, we don't show it on the website.
>
> The correct place IMHO is under 'packages', where a small explanation
> of available packages should be placed. It badly needs updating.

Oh, now i see them.
I agree that the units that are not fully documented can't be included in
the "official" reference manual.

But in IMHO they deserve at least being mentioned in the "Documentation" page :
"in addition to the units documented in the reference manuals,
there are also many contributed/unofficial/whatever  units . You can find
more about these units <here>, <here> and <here>  ."



> > FPC surely has a lot of documentation,  but it's scattered and sometimes
> > you need to be very determined to find the piece of information that you
> > need.
>
> A known problem. Some people thought the wiki would help out here, but
> it doesn't seem to happen.

Well, a wiki can't magically get organized by itself. Wikis are chaotical by
definition  :-D


If it is known that the documentation has issues ,  i guess that the most
constructive thing for me to do is to raise issues on mantis when i spot
an error or have an improvement idea, like :
- in page "Packages",  clicking on "Documentation"  opens an old version
  of that page (which doesn't include the link to FCL reference for example).
  Apparently the old page is docs.html  and the new one is docs.var.

- the "Units" and the "Contributed Units" pages seem to both refer to
contributed
  units. Perhaps these should be unified ?

- the "Documentation"  page is unnecessarily bloated because the manuals
are listed twice:  once the PDF versions and then the HTML versions.
A table with 3 columns would be clearer :  title,  link to HTML version,
link to PDF version.  (like this :
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/portal.portal_db?selected=5 )



Cheers,
Adrian Maier

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