Re: [Chicken-users] Windows binary manifest

[Brandon J. Van Every]

felix winkelmann wrote:

On 2/4/06, Brandon J. Van Every <address@hidden> wrote:
  

- is a flat directory structure really what's wanted?  I had thought
/bin, /include, /lib, /man directories would be more reasonable.  What
is standard practice?  I don't see a reason for the Windows distro to be
"different" than other platforms.
    

For pure win32 applications (not gcc based, or imitating a UNIX
environment) I thought that a flat structure is what people use most.
You can of course choose a different layout, but there aren't that
many files.
  

I am just wondering if when people make eggs, do they make assumptions about Chicken directory structure?  I still don't know much about that.  I just don't want Windows "being different" to trip anybody up or get in anybody's way.

(On a side note - what do you think of putting in as documentation?
The pdf, a single HTML page, or a bundle of HTML pages? I can't
decide right now, but I guess a bundle would be most convenient)

  

I would say "bundle of HTML."  It seems like there's too much documentation for a single HTML sheet.  I know that with HTML, I can always hyperlink around to stuff I want to get to.  I don't know if I can do this with PDF or not.  I've encountered very few PDF documents that I could actually do this with, so that my impression is "I cannot."  Regardless of the truth, that's the impression.  Impressions matter when people are fumbling with the docs for the 1st time.  Less people will give up if they see something they think they know how to navigate.

It would be best to have a toplevel link to the bundle of HTML somewhere, somehow.  Ideally, Chicken would have its own program group in "Start.. Program Files..." and so forth.  I don't presently know how to do that, but I'll look into it.  In any event, the toplevel of the HTML bundle should be named something obvious, like index.html or some such.  Failing that, as long as it's possible to navigate back up to the toplevel index / table of contents from any given page, people will figure it out.

I suppose searchability might argue for a PDF document.  I don't know how I easily search a bundle of HTML.  Is anyone else more clued into how other people do this?  The GNU crowd is always doing .info documents, but they're the only ones who like that stuff.  I wonder what the Eclipse people do.  I think HTML is the basis for most modern programming documentation, but I think they're doing extra things with it to make it more usable somehow.  I'll ask around about this if nobody here knows.

I know that DOxygen is popular for generating documentation, but I think that's mainly for C++ and doesn't help you any?

- there's a csi-static.exe but no csc-static.exe.  Is the latter desired?
    

Yes. Sometimes it can be convenient to have a static exe without
dynamic (DLL) loading issues. And chicken-static should be enough
for that case.
  

I am confused by you saying "yes" and then saying "chicken-static should be enough."  Do you want csi-static.exe?

- do you really want chicken.dll, chicken_gui.dll, and uchicken.dll?  As
opposed to libchicken.dll, libchicken_gui.dll, and libuchicken.dll.  The
lack of consistency in prefixing is confusing.
    

Yes, it's probably better to follow your advice.
  

Ok.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every