[Mono-docs-list] feature suggestion

[Gustavo Ramos]

> I can imagine a world of difficulties in getting this to actually work
> (the biggest of which being flux in the codebase) but this would be
> phenomenal if it could actually be pulled off.  Really, any major open
> source project that could pull something like this off would see a
> huge swell in developer contribution.  Getting over the critical
> knowledge hump that would make me useful to the project is the main
> bit holding me back.

Right! In the long term, it would bring back a lot of contributions to mono.
However this could be a huge task, comparable to the work needed for a
book. It could be a great candidate project for novell investments.

Personally would prefer a straight reading book format, instead of
cross-linked sources documents. They would be valuable as a reference for
the mono hacker, who knows --at least-- how the beast work. A book format
should do for those interested in learning the mono internals from
scratch. If that results in a huge project, the book could skip the basics
of compilers design.

I'm reading the book "Compilers. Principles, technics and tools.", it's
great, but a rather hard reading style. Apart from that, it's a lot of
theory, and don't dive into real implementations. Another book, which
title "Inside C#" suggests the internal side of C# doesn't go far, it's
rather a book for C# language learning, with just a few comments about
IL and other internals. However, Tom Archer (the Author of the latter)
wrote his book while he was learning C#, because at the time of the
writing .net was at beta stage. Well, mixing said things, it would be
not so hard to write a Mono book about internals while learning it.
Compilers design theory however couldn't be avoided at all, as it is
intimately linked to the implementation. I'd love to see someone taking
such an item :-)

I'd be happy to write it, but unfortunately don't have the time. Food
and survival is first :-(  Please, if someone would like to swap writing
subjects (e.g. blog <=> book), there would be a lot of interest out
there for it. Maybe someone about to write a thesis?

Regards,

Gustavo