From: William Webber <wew@...>
Date: 2003-07-29T11:57:01+09:00
Subject: Documentation for standard library -- what format?

Hi all!

I'm a bit confused as to what is meant to be the standard
format for documentation in the standard library.  For
instance, in the Net package, Net::ftp has relatively newly
contributed documentation in RDoc, whereas Net::http,
Net::imap, Net::pop, Net::smtp and Net::telnet have very
full documentation in RD, and Net::protocol is essentially
undocumented.

I ask because I got bored at work the other day and started
documenting Net::ftp in RD on RDP 
(http://www.rubyist.net/~rubikitch/RDP-en.cgi?cmd=src;name=net),
before checking to see what the current (1.8preview5)
documentation state was, and now I'm confused as to whether
I should continue with this or not.

Also, is there going to be an "authoritative" source for
standard library documentation (something like the JDK API's
Javadoc, or Python's library documentation), and if so,
where is it going to reside?  It took me a long time as a
nuby to figure out where documentation was, and I was
equally confused yesterday when I did a search around the
various Ruby documentation sites and projects (RDP,
www.ruby-doc.org, www.rubydoc.org (!), the Pickaxe book, the
embedded documentation, the old 1.4.6 reference manual
(which is the bundled documentation that comes with Ruby on
RedHat 8.0 and 9.0), various wikis, etc.).  The ruby
community seems to spawn documentation projects like the
scheme community spawns scheme interpreters. :-)  Again, I
ask because I'd like to contribute (if contributions are
sought), but I'm not sure what to contribute to...

William Webber