[Bioperl-l] Towards a 0.7 release

[Osborne, Brian]

Hilmar,

That's clear. What I would like to know next is what modules or topics I
should address. Or, you could make a list of modules that I could choose
from. I'm not the person to write a section that's general or introductory
in nature, but I think I could do a reasonable job on a specific module, as
a starting point. Also, point me towards an example of documentation that
you particularly admire - by having an example in mind I think we'd minimize
cosmetic revisions later.

Thanks again,

Brian O.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hilmar Lapp [mailto:hlapp@gmx.net]
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2000 12:34 PM
To: Osborne, Brian
Cc: Bioperl
Subject: Re: [Bioperl-l] Towards a 0.7 release


"Osborne, Brian" wrote:
> 
> To the group,
> 
> I would propose 6) Outline needs for documentation, then begin to assign
> writers to specific sections or areas.
> 
> I say this because I would be happy to work on documentation, if I only
knew
> what the intention of the documentation is. For example, I consider good

The intention of the documentation is to enable a potential user of a
module to actually use it without pain. Pain in this context is caused by,
e.g., getting no idea of the context and purpose in which to use it,
getting no idea about the capabilities of the module, calling it with
non-existent methods or wrong parameters due to documentation bugs. Sample
code usually helps people a lot, because a literal description of usage is
subjectively biased by the writer and may not be as obvious for someone
else.

In general, people who use BioPerl and went through pain by doing so are in
the best position to contribute, because they already know which things
were most painful. :-)

	Hilmar

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Hilmar Lapp                                email: hlapp@gmx.net
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