Re: [boost] Boost Doxygen documentation (was: 2000-10-22 Minutes )

From: Karl Nelson (kenelson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-01 14:08:58

<rant>
 
> Using the tool itself is easy, it has a portable build system made in perl
> and is accessible from cvs site.
> Lamers could download precompiled binaries from web site.

Lamers would include all windows uses.  Further, people such as myself
who doesn't want to see the monstrosity of a C++ library called Qt 
grow would never use it.  Call me a biased advocate but I am 
boycotting all Qt using programs until they clean up their
use of keywords something which I have proven time and again is
quite possible.    I don't like receiving mail from Qt library 
users telling me that my library is broken because I choose to
use things they declared as keywords.

If you want others similar opinions read Nathan Myers post at
  http://lwn.net/1999/0603/backpage.php3

And believe me I have argued many times with KDE advocates
and been told that doing "#define emit" to make Qt code pretty
is good C++ practice and is not a keyword.

 
> I think the main reason of relative doxygen weakness  in templates is that
> it is not commonly used with template libraries. I am sure boost usage of
> the tool will be a great "boost" of doxygen itself!

The reason it is bad at templates is that it is for documenting code
for a group which use a preprocessor rather than use the language
to get template functionality.  See the MOC compiler which Qt
uses. 

Why do we want to "boost" a project which uses a competing container
and algorithm library?  Doxygen is written in Qt and does not use
STL.  Qt is a commercial project and requires a license to compile
against for the Window architecture.   

Shouldn't the documentation generator for boost be something which
uses C++ the way boost intends?  If you are going to chose a doc 
generator at least chose one which matches the type of C++ code we 
wish to empower.  What is the point of promoting a standard for
high quality C++ libraries when the documentation generator we
require doesn't even use those standards?

</rant>

--Karl