[Lazarus] *** GMX Spamverdacht *** help writing help [was: Re: Re: Suggestion for TRadioGroup documentation]

[Martin Frb]

On 09/04/2016 13:05, Jürgen Hestermann wrote:
> Am 2016-04-08 um 20:36 schrieb Martin Frb:
> > On VirtualTreeView: I dont know if the Author is around, and if he 
> could/would answer questions, or even proof read contributed docs. But 
> if he was, then the question  "How long do you think would it take to 
> (fully) understand" is just the wrong question. The question should 
> be: how much time do you have? Is there a chance, that in that time 
> you can document at least one property or method? If yes, well then 
> start. If you get more done (now or later), then even better.
>
> Okay.
> Then please find the bug that you cannot collapse/expand nodes with the
> mouse if the main column is not the most left one.
Absolutely off topic, what is the point off that?

Proving that docs can be useful? No need, no one ever said that they 
were not. This mail is not about what you can or can not do with docs, 
but who can contribute to them.
Fixing a bug, will not contribute a single word to documentation. (a bug 
fixer may choose to add doc in addition to the fix, but that is 
unrelated to the fix.


>
> And believe me, I have already spend a lot of time on reading the code of
> the VirtualTreeView unit (and many other units too) but it is impossible
> to dig that deep into each to fully understand them.
> I cannot do the documentation for every single function and concept in 
> Free Pascal/Lazarus.
> Is that a reason that I am not allowed to complain about missing 
> documentation?
No one said you have to document ALL of them, start with just one. That 
was the big point of my last mail. If you ignore that then there was no 
point in any answer at all.

If indeed you studied that much, and can not yet specify for one single 
function what it does, then that is really just unlucky. That said, I do 
not claim that the docs you may be able to add at that point, are of any 
help to your current problem, they may document functions you are not 
interested in, but that would still be documentation.

Worst case you could add docs that leaves certain questions open, and 
document only what you were able to find (advertising that they miss out 
some effects.) this would still be something the next person could build on.