[Boost-users] Re: iterator_adaptor: disguise iterator as const_iterator?

From: Martin Wartens (martin.wartens_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-02 10:31:37

> > I have to say
> > that the documentation was not of much help to me. There are lots of
> > complicated implementation details but only small examples. 
> 
> You're not kidding?  Did you go through the tutorial starting with 
> iterator_facade (http://tinyurl.com/2gzpz#tutorial-example) which 
> continues on to the iterator adaptor tutorial 
> (http://tinyurl.com/58e2p#tutorial-example)?  Gee, it looks from the 
> below like you did!
No, I am serious. Looking at the iterator_facade doc, first of all it does not 
tell me what it is all about. The one sentence in the abstract is indeed very 
abstract. I would like to see the doc starting with a motivating use case. It 
should explain me why I would want to use it. Then the overview is concerned 
mainly with the implementation history and why policy classes are not used 
anymore. These are details that I would expect in the darkest corner of the 
appendix. The doc continues with more implementation details and describes 
problems that had to be solved. That is interesting, but it doesn't give me a 
start on how to use this library. The Reference listing with the class 
interface I would expect at the end of the doc. I noticed that the template 
parameters are not explained before the tutorial. I would like to see more 
examples, if that is possible. I hope this didn't sound rude, I know it must be 
hard to write a doc for such a complicated library.

Martin