Re: [eigen] Proposal: documentation for Eigen3

[Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thomas Capricelli wrote:
> Yes, i was about to say that. I use exactly this (mediawiki + pdf export)
> to generate doc on some other projects, and i'm happy with it.
> 
> Though, still, i'm not sure this would be the right approach for eigen. The
> use of doxygen has proved quite successful until now, and is of far better
> quality than the doc on the wiki.

There's no need to choose between a wiki documentation and a doxygen 
reference.  Both scratch different itches and both can and do coexist rather 
nicely.


> And i dont buy the argument about wiki database file that can be lost, this
> is easy to backup.. I could do it, and we could setup something on
> tuxfamily, and we could setup something on Benoit or Gael's own hard disk.
> I'm very confident we could do something that makes Benoit happy.

Indeed.  I also thought this argument was a bit far-fetched.


> Last, i agree that writing doc for eigen is technical, and it's not sure
> that making it 'easy' (on the wiki) would help. You want people writing
> such technical topic to be fluent in source, hg, and some such easy doc
> tool as (say) doxygen.

It's true that in order to produce documentation, the authors need to know 
what they are writing about.  Yet, if someone wishes to contribute something 
to the documentation then chances are that person already looked into the 
source code and found something which, from his experience using Eigen and 
fiddling with the source code, he believes deserves to be documented.  To put 
it in other words, we aren't talking about some clueless newbie who just 
parachuted into Eigen's world.  If someone intends to contribute to the 
documentation then naturally that person already has some experience with it.


Rui Maciel