Re: "waldschrotts guide to nifty references" - manualpage draft, version 0.9b

Rasmus Lerdorf writes: > Another advantage is that we have the people and the framework for > translating this stuff into many languages. Please show me a site out > there that has tutorials translated into 6-8 different languages. > > -Rasmus > > > One major advantage of keeping the tutorials and other supplementary > > materials with the manual is that the PHP team will have control over the > > quality, presentation and licensing of the resources. > > > > This is important because 3rd party sites are often not reliable - they go > > down, change their content and revenue model, become member only, are > > abandoned by their maintainer, etc... > > > > - zak > > This is quite true. And sometimes (no offense to anyway, I write as much 'wrong' code as anyone), they're wrong. Sometimes we're wrong too. But at least we're authoritatively wrong. What I mean is, people tend to want a feeling that the manual is the Last Word in what the language is all about. I personally think it should be restructured to expand upon the explanations etc in the Features and Getting Started sections, moving a bunch of the tutorial-type stuff there from the Language and Function reference in the process. Clean up the References to be perhaps more man-page-like. The function docs are quite free-form now, which can be irritating when you have to scan through 3 pages of explanation for the meat of the thing. For instance, I *know* which types of information I'll find in a man page, but on any given PHP manual page, all that I know for sure is that the function definition will be at the top. :) And the framework makes the 'size' of the manual more or less a non-issue, as far as I can see. Parts or all can be generated or linked separately, as Rasmus noted. There will still be a thriving need for Tips etc sites. And hopefully a bit more of a tutorial-style introduction would ease folks into using the language a bit. Just my $0.02 CDN. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ |Torben Wilson <torben@php.net> Netmill iTech| |http://www.coastnet.com/~torben http://www.netmill.fi| |Ph: 1 250 383-9735 torben@netmill.fi| +----------------------------------------------------------------+