Re: PREPROCESSOR doc request

From: vesa_karvonen (vesa_karvonen_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-29 02:56:30

--- In boost_at_y..., "David Abrahams" <david.abrahams_at_r...> wrote:
> Would it be possible to expand the tutorial section? It would be
> really helpful to have some additional tutorial material,
> especially on some of the new list manipulation stuff.

Most definitely. In a sense I've already started working on improving 
the documentation by starting to write examples. I plan to write 
multiple examples covering distinct kind of uses for the library. I 
recently added (but did not announce, because it is not completely 
finished yet) another example called "array_arithmetic.c". It uses 
lists to generate array operations in C. It generates over 1800 
functions (and takes a lot of time to preprocess).

> The particular thing I wanted to do seemed simple (to me): make a
> list of all the built-in integral types, then generate
> specializations of a class template for T and T const&, where T are
> all members of the list. But, the docs for FOR_EACH seemed
> daunting, especially the recursion depth business. I'm running
> short of time, so I don't feel I can invest what's needed to
> figure all of this stuff out.

hmm... I'll add an example on something like this. This kind of 
functionality is rather directly supported by the library.

> To be clear: I understand that by all rights I should RTFM, but
> the point I'm making is that people often make decisions like this
> based on what's expedient. Accessibility is very important if you
> want a library to actually be used.

I agree. The tutorial is currently out of date and the reference 
manual can be improved. It will take a while to revise them fully, 
but I'm working on it.