Re: Learning PEAR

On Thursday 14 August 2003 15:30, Keith Edmunds wrote: > PEAR has so much potential. > > I've been programming a while, I can find my way around. Even with a > language I don't really know I can usually sort out what I need. Over > the past month or so I've been asking what are probably trivial > questions on this list, and I've received help for which I'm very > grateful. > > But I shouldn't have to ask. > > The documentation for PEAR is _SO_ hard to work with - and I'm > talking from the perspective of one who wants to use PEAR, not add to > it. For example, I have read the section on HTML_Quickform and > renderers, and looked at the example code, and I'm still not really > sure what's going on. We can start with the section "Introduction - > renderers", which asks the question "What are renderers?" but never > answers it. The closest we get is when we learn that "The form output > logic is now contained in classes that extend > HTML_QuickForm_Renderer" - how does that help me? What does > HTML_QuickForm_Renderer do? Then I'm told that "There are 5 renderers > currently available, of which 2 are based on pre-3.0 code and 3 are > new." What are their names? Where can I find out more about them? > Does it matter that two are based on pre-3.0 code and, if so, how > does it matter? Which of these five should I be using? How do I > choose? > [snip....] > > All comments above meant to be constructive: I'm still prepared to > help where I can. > > Keith I agree with Keith. Also, not picking on Quickform, but that is where I've been spending my time lately. Info on how to define a group is one thing. Info that tells me *why* I want to create a group and what it does for me, etc. is at least as useful. The only way I've been able to get Quickform to do anything useful for me is to read the source. I suspect most potential users won't be willing to do that. Let me know how I can help and I'll try to pitch in. -- James 'Chip' Kaufman jkaufman@wamnet.com 651-256-5137 PGP key: 697D43DE