[Lazarus] "show declaration hints" has more power in it than is really used

[Bernd]

2010/7/22 Andreas Schneider <aksdb at gmx.de>:

> Many classes and methods are already documented in fpdoc.

Ok, now I'm looking for these files but it seems It is not so easy to
find them anywhere on the ftp server or the website or sf.net.  I am
using one of the recent snapshots and It would be nice to have a
snapshot of these fpdoc files that belong to the downloaded lazarus
version that i could just unzip into the folder where it belongs or
even better: a .deb or .rpm or a windows installer.

If these files are what is needed to make Lazarus more complete and
usable and context sensitive help available they should not be hidden
from the user. IMHO they should even be part of the standard lazarus
installer and if these fpdoc files are somehow an integral part of the
source that is needed for working with it and if the installer
installs the sources it should also install this "other half" of the
source.

(I will continue searching for these files and hopefully find them
somewhere after I have completed this email)

> Those are external files

I can not applaud this decision but unfortunately I won't be able to
convince the developers that this is fundamentally wrong. It seems
like too much effort has already gone into this to throw it away now,
altough this would be the wisest decision. IMHO code should be
documented in the code itself. This is what I (and many others) have
found most useful, most portable and most easy to handle. The process
of documenting code (something most programmers seem to find extremely
difficult and hard to do and therefore often don't do it at all)
should not be further *complicated* by forcing the usage of separate
files that must be kept in sync with the code and the usage of a
specialized tool. I hope the fpdoc thing can generate itself from
source comments alone that are already present in the code.

BTW: The statement somewhere in the fpdoc manual that code becomes
"obfuscated" by properly commenting it is ridiculous!