RE: [PEAR] PEAR Guide/Docs

> From: Gunther [mailto:php@trinidadshopping.com] > Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 6:19 AM > To: pear-general@lists.php.net > Subject: [PEAR] PEAR Guide/Docs > > After using PEAR for a while, I still find that whenever I like to use a > new > functionality I have to start a research project to find proper > documentation/information. Most of the time only the functions are > explained, but not how they should be used together. I just had to start > again a 'project' for DB transactions. And again I have to read the PEAR > php > source code for PEAR DB to actually understand how I should use the > functions and how they are named. > When I do a search at pear.php.net for e.g. 'autocommit', I get the > standard > answer: No results found > Mailing lists are the only source and hopefully now this newsgroup. The > site > is not really too helpful. Correct. Documentation is lacking. However we are just in the process of adding infrastructure that will improve things. 1) we want to autogenerate the phpDocs 2) tools are being developed that will help people write "proper" documentation > It would be great to see something like a guide for implementing > functionality using PEAR. > E.g. 'Transaction handling with PEAR', or 'Authentication with Pear' or > 'Error Handling with PEAR'. > Even the error handling, which is praised everywhere seems not to give me > the results I would like to > see. All I get: 'DB Error' for whatever DB error I get. > I presume it is my problem as everybody else fully understands PEAR in > detail. Before these types of guides will we written we have to get much more people interested in writing docs. Right now (correct me if I am wrong) most docs that are written are written by developers. As such I doubt many will have time to write guides that compliment the docs. > I selected PEAR because it is be part of the PHP distribution ... > Even the installation is always a 'task' of it's own. I always have to > copy > missing files/directories from somewhere else > e.g. the pear/scripts directory which somehow is never there (w2k). Yes, fixing PEAR on windows is a high priority. Unfortunately the developer community is full of *nix users and not so much full of windows users. However we do take windows seriously. Actually just yesterday I received a mail from the developer mailinglist with a plan on how to fix the PEAR installer on windows for php 4.3.2. Regards, Lukas