(Resent) Documentation - Reference to MSDN?

[Erich Hoover]

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Alexandre Julliard <julliard at winehq.org> wrote:
>
> Max TenEyck Woodbury <max at mtew.isa-geek.net> writes:
>
> > So, would it be OK with you to extract the current documentation and
> > put it in the wiki where it can be more easily maintained? Wikis are
> > supposed to be good for exactly that kind of thing.
> >
> > Once the wiki is populated with the initial information from the source
> > code, the source code could then be cleaned up by having links to the
> > wiki in place of the current cruft.
>
> That's fine, but please don't hijack the Wine wiki for this, start a
> separate one.
>

If we mock up an example, and it is deemed acceptable, would we be
permitted to make patches replacing the in-code documentation with the
URL for the appropriate function?  The idea here would be to
accomplish several goals:
1) Give new Wine developers somewhere to look for documentation to
help them get started
2) Give current Wine developers investigating something outside of
their expertise some information to help familiarize them with another
area of the API
3) Provide unchanging URLs that can legitimately be used in the source
code without fear of them changing every week (or being lost forever
in the case of some older functions)
4) Document the ever-growing list of unexpected behaviors that MSDN
will never tell you about

Obviously this is a big task and it's not something that is going to
happen overnight, but I think that such a wiki could provide a useful
service to the Wine community.  My primary concern here is
participation, since if there's little or no participation it will
never grow to the magnitude that's necessary for it to be a helpful
resource.  So, I guess I'm saying that if there's at least some chance
of embedding URLs in the source that will direct people to this
documentation then I'd feel much more comfortable investing my free
time in setting something up.

Erich Hoover
ehoover at mines.edu