On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 4:21 PM, David Mertens <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 1:52 PM, P Kishor <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Breaking this thread into what should have been two threads to begin
>> with...
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Judd Taylor <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> ..
>> >
>> > As far as documentation problems, it sounds like something went wrong
>> > with your build of the .pd file, which autogenerates most of the OO
>> > functions, and autogenerates the documentation as well. The PDL online
>> > docs don't show any placeholders as you describe:
>> > http://pdl.sourceforge.net/PDLdocs/IO/GD.html
>> >
>>
>> Man, I never even considered looking at the above link. I usually just go
>> to search.cpan.org, and that is where I see all the documentation gaps. See
>> for yourself...
>> <http://search.cpan.org/~chm/PDL-2.4.6/IO/GD/GD.pd>
>>
>> The link you sent me at pdl.sf.net is indeed way more comprehensive.
>>
>> To the maintainers... is there a reason we have two locations for PDL
>> stuff... cpan and sf? Can't they be merged, so when I say "tomahto"
>> you don't understand "tomayto"?
>
> Yes. The reason is because PDL::PP does a lot of documentation generation
> for its authors. It was written with pdldoc - not CPAN - in mind. By the
> time you try perldoc or pdldoc, all of the .pd files have been procesed and
> you get pretty output. Anyway, this has led to a whole lot of documentation
> that displays correctly with perldoc and pdldoc (and Padre), but not on
> CPAN. It turns out that you can put in all sorts of things into the .pd
> file  by hand that will make it display properly, but nobody has endeavored
> to do this for the bulk of PDL. As my first project to fix this, I tackled
> PDL::Slices, and you can compare the results. For best contrast, look near
> the bottom of the pages:
>
> http://search.cpan.org/~chm/PDL-2.4.6_001/Basic/Slices/slices.pd (corrected)
> http://search.cpan.org/~chm/PDL-2.4.5/Basic/Slices/slices.pd (old)
>
> I started working on PLplot but got sidetracked. I've had a mind to write up
> how to clean up the old documentation and write new PDL documentation
> guidelines, but I've not gotten around to it. For now, the rule of thumb is
> this: use your local copy of the documentation (which for me displays
> beautifully in Padre) or use the documentation generated for Sourceforge.

Sorry, Padre is not an option for me. I could never get it to work on
my Mac, and the purported rewards from installing it are simply not
high enough for me to justify bearing the pain. I tried to install it
from source, and found that I needed a threaded perl. I installed a
threaded perl and failed in installing Padre even then. Then I found a
binary .dmg for Macs on the Padre web site, downloaded it, but it
crashes on every invocation. I informed the folks on Padre IRC, but no
one responded. I go back to my stable Coda or TextWrangler.

pdldoc, on the other hand, is an interesting option, but I would
prefer an htmlized version locally on my machine for my disconnected
viewing pleasure. Yes, now that I know I can use sf.net, but can I
generate the real pdl docs as html on my own laptop?


> All sorts of people new to PDL will look on CPAN and will be confused until
> it's fixed. I know it's a problem and I'm slowly working on it. Sorry I've
> not covered more ground.
>
> David



-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org
Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu
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