documentation generator

[Frank Warmerdam]

Josh Hevenor wrote:
> Has there been consideration into using a documentation generator like 
> Doxygen to aid in keeping the class references up to date? I’ve come 
> across a few examples where parameters to class functions are not 
> intuitively named (for newbs like me at least) and aren’t described 
> elsewhere. I’m only familiar with the PHP class reference so maybe there 
> are other resources that I’m missing.  

Josh,

I think Doxygen is most useful when it can take advantage of Doxygen's
understanding of c/c++ declarations and when we can put the source
documentation right in the source code.  I don't think this works so well
for mapscript because the mapscript constructs are fairly different than
how things work at the C API level in MapServer.  Also, the PHP and non-PHP
mapscript bindings are implemented quite different and so it is hard to have
one set of docs that would apply to both.

So, I'm not personally all that keen on using Doxygen for this.  I might
change my opinion if we got more serious about publishing a firmly defined
C API for MapServer and tieing mapscript more directly to it.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org