Re: [Boost-users] [range] questions about documentation and usage

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [range] questions about documentation and usage
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-11-02 12:54:07

Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
> On 02-11-2012 07:11, Robert Ramey wrote:

>> c) Another really annoying thing is that every thing is directly in
>> the boost namespace.  This breaks the convention that library
>> headers are in boost/<library name> and in the namespace
>> boost::<library name>.  This creates a lot of opportunity for
>> conflict.
>
> Maybe so, but how would you change that without breaking code?

No question that fixing this would break existing code.

The real question is whether making this change would be worth
breaking code.

a) The breakage in users of range wouldn't be a big deal in my
opinion.  Just rebuild the ap and fix the compilation errors.

b) Making such a change would be a fairly big job - not a tweak.
Of course this is not a big concern to me as I wouldn't be doing
the job.

Here are a few miscelaneous personal observations on the range library

a)  To me, the range library/concept is not appreciated to the extent
it should be.  I don't think that potential users appreciate the utility
of being able to compose adaptors.  I think the documentation would
benefit from more examples.

b) The documentation is pretty regular - I like this.  But each
page needs a small example to help clarify things.  See fusion
library for an example.

c) I'm not crazy about the '|' syntax - OK I'm out voted here
but I don't have to use it so I don't have any real objection.

d) When I've used the library - I've found that I've had to
spelunk through the code to understand how to "make it
work".  Of course now I don't recall the specific cases other
than the one which motivated this post, but they are common.
I believe that more examples and tests would smoke these out.

e) Somethings are not quite right - the thing that motivated this
post is the confluence of containers and ranges.  There might
be other things.

I believe that this library could have a big future but that it needs
more work to "get it right".  This raises the question of how such
work should get done.  Of course this situation apply's to many
libraries.

Robert Ramey