[Bf-taskforce25] Developer Docs

[Joshua Leung]

Hi,

Very true.... docs have kindof fallen by the wayside, and I suspect that
only a handful of us know the full extent of how most of everything works
regarding all this stuff.

Even so, I know I spent about 3 days reading through various commits + the
code used in many places before I figured out how to get UI's for various
editors written with the new layout engine from C (at the time, all the
layouts had been converted to Python already, but there was some stuff that
wasn't that easily wrapped in RNA at the time). However, even now I'm still
baffled by how/where the context for the buttons window actually gets set...

I should point out here though, that the example you gave about the Action
Editor is not actually correct anymore, since I have converted it to use the
new layout engine stuff (c-api not py though).


Regards,
Joshua

On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Roland Hess <me at harkyman.com> wrote:

> Howdy. I've been looking ahead to some down time before my next project
> kicks in, and was hoping to spend it doing some work on 2.5 (maybe
> operator-i-fying some armature and anim stuff, python-i-fying headers,
> etc.) but have run into a snag. It seems as though the developer docs
> that were quite popular at the beginning of this whole project have
> fallen behind the times. I tried to work through these projects by
> simply reading the code, but without anything at all to guide (i.e.
> comments in the code), I'm getting the feeling that it's just too much
> work for the time I have available.
>
> What would be great from a returning developer's point of view (and I'm
> sure it would benefit future devs as well), would be to have examples of
> some of the new structures well-documented within the code. For example,
> when adding header menus and elements for a new space type (Action space
> still uses the old structure) it would be instructive to have at least
> one of the other existing space types that has already been converted
> have explanatory comments within the code. I realize that for those of
> you who came up with the concepts for how all of this new stuff works
> internally, this is pretty simple and obvious stuff. For those of us who
> would like to pitch in, though, there is no doc that says: python-based
> header menus require items 1,2,3 and a,b,c. I suppose that one could
> really take a couple of weeks, read all of the code, figure out what's
> relevant and what isn't, what's canon and what's a hack, and then start
> pecking away with trial and error until the light goes on. However, I
> think it would be much better if the way this stuff works were actually
> written down somewhere.
>
> Not sure how many people are in my same boat, i.e. if I understand the
> structure and specs I can do the work. It might be a lot. It might be
> just me. From the looks of things, there is plenty of dev help at this
> point, so it might not even be worth the time to really document these
> new processes.
>
> Anyway, thanks for listening.
> Roland Hess
> harkyman
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-taskforce25 mailing list
> Bf-taskforce25 at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-taskforce25
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-taskforce25/attachments/20090725/36981bea/attachment.htm