[Lazarus] Lazarus has unique font sizes

Hans-Peter Diettrich DrDiettrich1 at aol.com
Sun Aug 16 17:50:47 CEST 2009


Mattias Gaertner schrieb:

> First of all: Take a look in the wiki log and you will see that every
> day things are updated or added.

That's no excuse for the absence of a compact general documentation or
help on all classes, properties and methods. The interfaces don't change
so often, or cannot be changed at all for Delphi compatibility.

> About the forum vs wiki: There are many experts in the various forums
> writing good advices and sometimes lengthy explanations. I wish they
> would instead add the hints to the wiki and just post a link in the
> forum.

Just *lengthy* explanations are not the base of useful OH.

All contributions should be verified, by people with according
knowledge, i.e. the implementors in the first place. These also can add
hints on topics which are subject to changes.

Instead of adding to the wiki, notes also could be created by fpdoc and
added to the SVN, provided that every user has write access to the
documentation folder.


> It is true, that the quality of the Delphi help is really good - and 
> in too many areas better than the lazarus help. But "no usable
> documentation" is a bad exaggeration. There are for example more than
> 1000 wiki pages and the lcl fpdoc contains more than 30.000 notes.

Useful help must be structured, with links from the general keys
(identifiers in source code) to all the related information. It must not
be scattered across a number of unrelated and unlinked places.

Delphi help is good because it is structured, and every piece has its
place in that structure. It has taken CG many years, to find a useful
replacement for the old WinHelp, and to move all contents to the new
structure. That's not fun, that's hard work. I already have considered
to write my own documentation, and to sell it as a service...

Lazarus also could ask CG for a license for the Delphi help, so that 
most parts can be ported by copy&paste. Then it were up to the 
implementors, to add the Lazarus specific notes, and finally everybody 
could add examples and other stuff.

DoDi





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