root manual from the other side of the moon

From: Anton Fokin (fokin@tsl.uu.se)
Date: Sat Feb 12 2000 - 11:17:28 MET


Hi there!

I do not know if I am going to write my part of the manual :) but I would
like to suggest people who are really going to do it to look first how
_good_ manuals for _frameworks_ are written. I.e. I would like to see
something which stands close to Turbo Vision, ObjWindows, Delphi, C++
Builder, Qt, (well, I think about 99% of you know those mans) or, perhaps,
Java. These are in some way _frameworks_ and the reader gets feeling about
how to understand and follow the framework (like, object model, event model
and handling, rtti, serialization, error and exception handling) rather than
how to use it as an object lib to open a file and build a histogram.

Concerning the format, it doesn't matter, the only one thing to keep in
mind: it would be nice to be able to convert the manual to a somewhat
"standardized" on-line helper (i.e. a help window you get than you press F1
or go to the "help" menu), so it ...perhaps... should have an
easy-to-convert cross-reference structure to create index, key search, etc
(well, look how mustdie95 helper works). Of course if you are going to write
a _book_, it might be different, but I am not sure that the first versions
would stay so far away from a kind of "on-line" manual. And ... it is much
more easier to write a help window object which can show a html page (by the
way why it is not done yet in ROOT?:) everybody has it and it is a _very_
useful object)) than pdf or ms word ...

Anton



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