Re: sources of kawa documentation

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Hoehle, Joerg-Cyril wrote:
> Maybe I miss something, but I have trouble with the documentation.
> It's only by browing the mailing list archive, clicking randomly on this
 > or that article that I saw how to use important parts of the Kawa system.

I share your frustration.  I wish I had time to improve the
documentation more, but I do try to document as much as I can.
Unfortunately, Kawa is not as popular as other language implementations
(though of course that has very little to do with quality), so I don't
get much contributions (of either code, documentation, or money).

I have recently had two articles accepted in Dr Dobbs Journal
(on generating bytecode with gnu.bytecode) and XML Journal (intro
to XQuery).  I will probably write more articles, as it does all
of pay me (much-needed) money, get my name and Kawa more visible,
and get more tutorial-style documentation.  (The intro to XQuery
is available at http://www.gnu.org/software/qexo/XQuery-Intro.html)

> As an example, print-as-xml,

print-as-xml is gone.  It was quite buggy.
Instead we now have the --output-format option, which is
both nice and documented.  It should be possible to implement
print-as-xml's functionality using the --output-format framework.
In fact I'm trying to come up with how best to do chains of
output filters (i.e. combining consumers).

> as-xml, (require 'xml) are not mentioned in the documentation

as-xml should be documented, though the implementation is poor.

> Another example: (invoke x 'get-class) etc.

Well. this is implied, though I suggest:  (invoke x 'getClass).
This is just a special case of invoke, as getClass is a standard
Java method.

> Other areas of interest to me: consumers concept,

Well, it's an implementation-level issue.  I.e. it's not
really supposed to be visible at the Scheme level.

Maybe this could be another Dr Dobbs article ...

> HTTP queries and responses

Well, there is some documentation in this chapter:
http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/XML-tools.html
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/per/