Re: moving toward a 3.0 release

[David Bateman]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 27-Sep-2006, David Bateman wrote:
> 
> | In any case the major point to address for the non graphic types amongst
> | us is documentation and bugs. I'd vote for a complete restructuring of
> | the manual as I don't think chapters made up from the help of the
> | functions is much use.
> 
> Having chapters that only contain the doc strings was never the
> intent.  I have always wanted to have the doc strings complemented
> with text that includes some overall description of the set of
> functions described in a given chapter.  It's just that the current
> text doesn't meet that goal very well.

Ok, then the sparse stuff has the function helps integrated at the end,
and to make this chapter consistent with the others will need the
functions interspersed into the chapter.

> 
> | I think some of the early chapters of the
> | existing manual aren't bad, and their is a fair amount of raw material
> | for a new section of oct-files with coda + del segna,
> 
> Yes, I intend to write something more complete for .oct files.

My point was that you should have to write it yourself. With coda, there
 is 27 pages in coda and probably the same in del segna. Add to that the
5 pages for sparse oct-files (misplaced in the sparse section of the
manual at the moment), and you have nearly 60 pages of source material
for a chapter on oct-files. This is probably the single easiest chapter
for you to find someone else to write for you. Ideally it should be Paul
Thomas, though he's been rather quiet lately.

The chapter (or sub-section) on the mex file interface might be harder
to find someone to write it though, particularly as you have to be
careful of not using any copyrighted source material...

> 
> | In any case John, I think perhaps the first step with the
> | documentation is to fix a table of contents and a sketch of the desired
> | contents and ask for volonteers to help write the chapters, and in that
> | way I believe the document might come together rapidly.
> 
> Yes, I just haven't gotten there yet.

:-)   I was just suggesting you might see yourself as a editor and
having a larger number of individual chapter authors to accelerate things..

D.