[Mono-dev] GSoC 2011 - Documentation Addin

[Michael Hutchinson]

On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 7:22 PM, zur13 <zur_13 at i.ua> wrote:
> Hi Team Mono
>
> I want to take part in Documentation Addin project. I think that work in
> your team will be very exciting experience. I want to get skills in IDE
> programming and to familiarize with basics of code parsing and automation of
> documentation processing.
>
> What is final result should look like (this is only my point of view and I
> likely discuss it): it will be the interractive pad, that will show the part
> of documentation for the current (under or nearest to the text cursor) part
> of code and provide basic text editing features and maybe feature of
> template generating document for the current part of code if it hasn`t
> documentation yet.

Yes, there are a bunch of different ideas in this area. The project is
essentially to improve MD's support for documentation. As it is, there
are two kinds of documentation:
* inline "XML doc comments"
* MonoDoc files
MD supports XML doc comments pretty well, though it could be improved.
However, MD has no support for creating or editing MonoDoc
documentation. So the project could consist of any combination of the
following:
* a documentation project type, for creating and compiling MonoDoc docs
* the pad you mentioned, for editing MonoDoc docs
* nicer editing support for XML doc comments
* a pad for displaying and browsing docs, regardless of source
* some integration/unification between MonoDoc and XML docs

> Rough workplan:
>  * Observe MonoDoc and MonoDevelop parsing interfaces, maybe fix some bugs
> (5-7 days)
>  * Observe MonoDevelop addin architectures and design general Documentation
> Addin architecture (7-12 days)
>  * Coding
>  * Tests and bugfix (18 days)
>  * Prepare Documentation (5 days)

FWIW, I'm wary of any project proposal that begins with periods of
planning/design/research - ideally, such stuff should be done when
creating the proposal, so we have a good idea of what you'll be doing.

-- 
Michael Hutchinson
http://mjhutchinson.com