[fpc-pascal] Documentation and posts suggestions [LONG]

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 15 Mar 2009, Francisco Reyes wrote:

> Tomas Hajny writes:
> 
> > I'm not sure if Francisco meant the Reference Guide or possibly some
> > examples appearing in the other documents;
> 
> I was looking specifically about the rtl pdf.
> 
> 
> >if it's the latter, a more concrete example would be probably useful.
> 
> Where are the examples? I recall seem them in the past, but can't find them
> now.

Only the RTL units have examples in them. FCL units do not, and the classes
unit also do not have them any more. The reason is 2-fold:

- Time
- More complex concepts require more complex examples.

> 
> Also as I become more serious about FPC what would be the recommended order of
> reading the docs?
> 
> I have:
> prog.pdf  ref.pdf  rtl.pdf  user.pdf    
> Want to go over them in the coming week. I like to read as much as I can
> before jumping into more serious development. Right now doing a couple of
> simple utilities partly because I need them for work and partly to re-learn
> pascal. 

I don't think it is possible to give an order. Normally I would think
user
ref
prog

and the rtl/fcl as you need them.

> 
> > eyes of a newcomer as suggested by Francisco. I don't think that the places
> > I found (including the dedicated chapter for exceptions in the Reference
> > Guide) make this rule very obvious, so there may be some room for
> > improvement
> 
> Just looked at that part in the reference and agree that it could at least
> mention it needs delphi or objectpascal modes.

I will do so.

> 
> > allowing to change the mode, but the newcomer may not even know / understand
> > that he should be interested in changing the compiler mode 
> 
> Exactly. Specially newcomers may have a good chance to not know what documents
> and in what order they need to read them.
> I think it may be a bit easier for someone coming from Delphi, but someone
> just starting out, may not even know that exception handling is object pascal
> and not part of the standard pascal.

Like I said, I will add some sentences/paragraphs about this.

Michael.