RE: [boost] Formal Review: Template Metaprogramming Library (MPL)

From: Aleksey Gurtovoy (agurtovoy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-07-25 05:42:07

Paul A. Bristow wrote:
> Minor observations:
> 
> 1 I find iter_fold a most unhelpful and obscure name.  

I think it's not much worse than 'iter_swap', which somehow got into the
Standard :).

> Would iter_operate be better?

I would prefer to keep 'fold' as a part of the name.

> 
> 2 Table of Content should surely be plural Contents? (Occurs twice?)

Right, thanks. I always forget which one is the right spelling.

> 3 I find the _c suffix less than obvious. (The paper uses it 
> without prior definition which left me fast forwarding to find what it 
> meant!).  

Will try to make a more gentle introduction of it :)

> It would be more in keeping with current trends towards full words to 
> make the suffix _constant.  

It would ruin the essential shortness of many names such as 'int_c'. I am
afraid one or another suffix notation is unavoidable here.

> hat does _impl mean? 

"implementation". Remember Sutter's "Pimpl"? :)

> Why is forward abbreviated to fwd but backward spelt out? 

Where?

> 4  All the documentation would benefit greatly from MANY more 
> examples.
> These could be provided in-line, or as hyperlinks.

Just to clarify, do you mean the examples like at the end of the reference
page of every component, or something else?

> I find the examples much more easily understood than the 
> rather standardese descriptions
> (though these are essential).
> 
> 5  The structure of the documentation left me confused. It 
> doesn't seem to start with a top-level index.html and link to 
> everything else? 

It does, actually, only 'index.html' has the contents on its own :). I'll
look into reorganizing it.

> 
> 6 Comments do not follow the style guide of starting with 
> capital letter and ending with a period.

I do not subscribe to this one :).

> Overall I support adoption of MPL. It appears to have great potential.
> Being based on C++ and STL are great strengths, but MPL will 
> need a lot of selling through more and better documentation and 
> examples to really catch on.

Thank you for your comments,
Aleksey