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Re: Documentation frustrations
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Re: Documentation frustrations


  • Subject: Re: Documentation frustrations
  • From: Thierry Faucounau <email@hidden>
  • Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 08:12:17 +0200



On Jul 6, 2005, at 8:06 PM, Tim Conkling wrote:

On Jul 5, 2005, at 2:51 PM, Chris Hanson wrote:


On Jul 5, 2005, at 9:46 AM, Brandon Sneed wrote:


Despite VS.NET's UI being awful, writing code that works is made extremely easy by the good quality documentation and automation of common tasks.



Can you elaborate on your latter point (automation of common tasks) a bit?


  -- Chris


I'd like to chime in here.

As would I :)

I have recently had to work on a Carbon app and have been struggling with the very poor documentation for the Mac's new red headed stepchild (I cannot wait to get back to fullscreen OpenGL apps after the insane struggle this has been).

The particular case I would like to outline is this, for the last hour I have been trying to locate possible error codes for HIView functions. Pretty much all of the documentation for Carbon functions ends with this very unhelpful phrase:

function result: An operating system status code.

Now that is all good and well, but it would seem that MacErrors.h (where I used to look for these things) is no longer around (just a one line stub that #includes <CoreServices/CoreServices.h>).

In contrast, most (if not all) of the MS docs I have dealt with (D3D for the most part) clearly enumerate the possible error codes that a particular method can return. This just seems like a good practice to me.

Now I do have an older version of MacErrors.h from my CW install but I cannot seem to figure out if the error codes it contains are still around and valid (afraid I have not done a lot of Carbon coding in the last 5-6 years).

Searching ADC, the on disk docs or grepping through the sea of header files has so far born little fruit (HIView.h itself contains one(!) error define for errNeedsCompositedWindow). I would appreciate any help anyone could give.

This recent experience has driven home for me a lot of the points made in this thread. Basically, many aspects of the current docs are just not up to snuff right now.

Ah, but for the days when reading Inside Mac Volume 6 would cut off the blood flow to your legs :) And Kon & Bal, bring back Kon & Bal!

Thierry Faucounau

Senior 3D Engineer -- Zonic
http://www.zonic.co.uk/games/

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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Documentation frustrations
      • From: George Warner <email@hidden>
    • Re: Documentation frustrations
      • From: Thierry Faucounau <email@hidden>
References: 
 >re: Documentation frustrations (From: George Warner <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Documentation frustrations (From: Brandon Sneed <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Documentation frustrations (From: Chris Hanson <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Documentation frustrations (From: Tim Conkling <email@hidden>)

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