[Mono-list] where to get the right documentation?

[Davy Brion]

On Wednesday 10 September 2003 10:41, Martin Willemoes Hansen wrote:
> Here a a couple of nice documentation hints :o)
>
> http://www.go-mono.com/tutorial/

allthough i appreciate the tutorials, i've already gone through them... the 
problem is when you want to do more advanced stuff.  The documentation 
currently isn't good enough to do that (ie: methods and events that aren't 
listed in the API documentation of gtk#)

> http://www.go-mono.com:8080/

this is the same as mono.ximian.com:8080 and as i said in my first mail, it's 
outdated and painfully slow.

> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/

that is very usefull if you're using GTK+
however, i wanna use gtk# so i'd prefer to use API documentation that actually 
uses the same programming language i use.

> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html
>/cpref_start.asp

yes this is excellent documentation... i already had that one bookmarked :)
it doesn't have anything to do with gtk# however.

>
> Wright, Peter: Beginning Gtk+/GNOME programming
>
> Remember to read the source of Gtk+ too, its pretty nice.

unfortunately i don't have the time to learn GTK+ and then start using gtk#.  
Most people won't be willing to learn GTK+ just because they need it to use 
gtk# in a way that allows them to write advanced GUI applications.  It's 
kinda like telling people they need to learn C before they can learn C#.  I 
wanna be able to use gtk# efficiently without having to learn GTK+.  And i'm 
sure many people feel the same way about this.

Once again, i do not want to offend the people that work on mono.  On the 
contrary, i'm very happy with the things that are already possible with mono.  
I just want to point out that for those of us who don't have any gtk+ 
experience, it's frustrating to learn gtk# due to the current level of the 
documentation.  And yea i've already received plenty of "it's a developing 
project so do your part and write the documentation yourself" mails so don't 
bother pointing that out.  I'd be willing to help out in the documentation 
part, but it's kinda hard to write documentation about stuff 
(methods/events/...) you didn't even know existed isn't it?  Now of course i 
can't expect the documentation to be as good as the one available at MSDN.  
But it would be nice to at least have a complete API reference (all the extra 
eplanation isn't even necessary... just a list of everything the class has to 
offer would be nice) which would be easily accessible (for instance in HTML 
form like that GTK+ API documentation that you mentioned).

All i'm saying is that if you want people to use mono and gtk#, then don't 
expect them to learn GTK+ first or to have GTK+ experience.  People who don't 
know GTK+ but who want to learn GTK# won't like being told "learn GTK+ first 
and then you'll be able to use GTK# well enough".  As i said before, it's 
like telling people to learn C before they can learn C# and we all know 
that's not necessary.

kind regards,
davy brion