From: Warren Young
Date: March 7 2005 7:32pm
Subject: Re: Documentation
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Steve Mansfield wrote:

> Indeed - as I go through the manual (which, on reflection, is really, *really* 
> awful) I'm having a lot of those 'huh?' moments. Trouble is, at this stage I 
> don't know whether those are caused by my lack of knowledge about C++ or just 
> obscurity in the manual itself.

The problem isn't that the manual is obscure, it's that it's a reference 
manual, not a tutorial.  Sure, there's stuff in there that tries to be a 
tutorial, but they should be separated out and clarified.  We should 
either have two manuals, or at least a manual in two sections.  What a 
newbie wants from a manual is not the same thing that those of us who 
have been using MySQL++ for years want.

The tutorial should be built around the existing examples.  Where 
insufficient examples exist to support the flow of the tutorial, write 
more examples.

I don't think anything should be done about the reference manual right 
now.  I'll probably initiate that effort myself, using Doxygen or 
something like it:

	http://sourceforge.net/projects/doxygen/

> So, if anyone on the writing team 

Um, so far, you and Earl are the team.  Go team.  :)

> wants to send me the current version of the manual, 

You have the current version.  The last time it was touched was nearly 4 
years ago, when 1.7.9 was released.