From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-07-06T23:40:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Advocacy/Documentation/Sponsorship?

gabriele renzi wrote:

> il 6 Jul 2004 04:35:54 -0700, daniel@danielcremer.com (Daniel Cremer)
> ha scritto::
> 
> 
>>In a bid to not simply complain... (cause we all hate those right ?) I
>>would have one suggestion. Why don't we make an application so that
>>people can submit documentation. I believe this is what MonoDoc does
>>for the Mono project where they have a GUI and a web-based interface
>>(http://www.mono-project.com/contributing/classlib-doc.html). That way
>>each time someone plays around with an object or a method they can
>>just submit some documentation with a short sample of code. With such
>>a system, and participation of course, the documentation problem could
>>taken care very quickly.

Maybe.  It requires folks to take the time to actually write the docs, 
and time and effort to verify these docs  for correctness.

> 
> 
> well, this would be nice, indeed.. A simple web form would fit imo.. 


Or a Wiki.  Or E-mail. Right now, people can, and a few people do, add 
documentation and examples to the Ruby Garden wiki.  Or send documents 
or links to me for inclusion on ruby-doc.org.  But not enough.

(I tried to take a look at the monodoc app, but the web version returns 
an error right off the bat, and the GTK version does not seem to get 
installed with the Windows version of mono 1.0.)

Perhaps making it even easier than it already is will help.  I suspect, 
though, that most docs, like most code, gets written by a relatively 
small percentage of the user base.


James Britt
jbritt AT ruby-doc DOT org