Adam, You raise some interesting points.
Documentation is something all the engines have suffered from, and due to the fact we see Adobe as the "standard" then we felt there was no reason to duplicate our own. We did produce a set of documents that would highlight our features and differences. So i don't accept your charge of "commercially exploitative". It was just the way it landed.
Documentation takes a lot of effort and no matter what you produce, it will never be enough.
The OpenBD manual effort is building on the new addition that we are writing documentation into the code-base and have the engine generate it automatically. Very much how Java/JavaDocs works. We should have started this initiative __years__ ago. But we didn't. No point in crying over spilled milk as they say, we are where we are.
As for a centralised resource, there is nothing stopping anyone from stepping up to the plate to do it. It doesn't require any involvement from any one engine to start. Sure we'll donate what we have, and by all means link to a centralized resource. Our docs are released under a CreativeCommons, so there is nothing stopping anyone from linking straight to us and sucking in our latest'n'greatest tag/function docs.
That is why we are building our docs into the code base, so it is always reflective of what is running instead of the usual retort "aah the documentation isn't updated yet".
The CFML community is small and doesn't enjoy the same rich array of user contributed sites the likes of java/php do, but we would love to see that change.
That is why we are building more at [www.openbluedragon.org] so our content can be re-purposed and reused where it is needed.
So while you say you don't have the "OBD community spirit", we really need "CFML community spirit" so all the engines can enjoy greater growth and adoption.
I can't speak for the other engines, but for us, we can never have _too many_ users, always room for just a few more!
;)
I'm all for community participation, but I think it's a waste of resources for each CFML flavour to have its own duplicate of the CFML reference, esp when 99% of it would be the same. It'd be more helpful for the community as a whole to have one centralised (and flavour- neutral!) version of this.
-- Open BlueDragon Public Mailing List http://www.openbluedragon.org/ http://twitter.com/OpenBlueDragon online manual: http://www.openbluedragon.org/manual/ mailing list - http://groups.google.com/group/openbd?hl=en
