[fpc-devel] Code is clean now, but how about documentation?

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Mon, 6 Oct 2008 19:09:23 +0200 (CEST)
Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Marco van de Voort wrote:
> 
> > In our previous episode, Tom Verhoeff said:
> > > I don't want to wake up sleeping dogs, but while updating various
> > > slides to base them on FreePascal/Lazarus instead of Delphi, I
> > > found that some documentation that I had copied from the Delphi
> > > Help years ago (probably version 6 or so), is literally the same
> > > in the FreePascal RTL documentation.
> >  
> > > In this particular case, it concerns the text for the String
> > > function Delete:
> > > 
> > >   Delete removes Count characters from string S, starting at
> > > position Index.  All characters after the deleted characters are
> > > shifted Count positions to the left, and the length of the string
> > > is adjusted.
> > > 
> > > It is word for word exactly the same in the current FPC RTL
> > > reference.
> 
> Given that I didn't even own or use Delphi at the time the system
> unit was first documented, this is strange news indeed. 
> 
> In each case:
> The documentation has been hand-written from scratch, always in the 
> 'joe' editor, starting on a 486 machine exclusively running linux
> version 1.x something (As some core members may remember, the machine
> was called tflily) many years ago when I just did the Linux port. The
> editing has always been done on a linux machine. Copy & Paste from a
> TP or Delphi manual or help file is excluded, unless performed by
> someone else than me: there have been some minor contributions over
> the years - but they are rare, considering the more than 2000 pages.
> A few bigger exceptions aside, I couldn't even say which ones or
> remember the last contribution.

Maybe you should sue Codegear.

Mattias