Re: [Flightgear-devel] route manager crash

[Tobias D. <tda...@gm...>]

> Yes absolutely agreed - the problem is getting that feedback.
> Basically when I hit a ‘beta’ point, I really want to get feedback
> from aircraft developers before freezing the interface (eg, Nasal
> property names, and exact behaviour). Which is why I hesitate to write
> up docs at that point, because once I write the docs, the API is
> frozen and people complain if it changes in incompatible ways.
> 
> (Which is fair, but then I get stuck unable to ‘finish’ the code,
> since I am always unsure if it really does what people need)

Maybe a good middle ground would be to write doc comments that are
enough to figure out how stuff works with a bit of effort, but no README
yet, and possibly even mark unstable parts as such.

> Ah, this I can only say, to me it’s clear what the code does, from the
> names I used. I only add comments when it needs clarification. The
> problem is this is 100% subjective, so I will only add comments when
> someone else looks at the code and asks for clarification. I’m not
> good at guessing which areas people might find unclear, so I just wait
> to be asked.

Yes, age-old problem. Best solution is to get more people involved. Hmm,
chicken, eggs, etc.

> Well, to me there’s only one value which parameterises the hold:
> either time or distance. The other parameters have their own names
> (jnbound radial etc, turn direction etc). 

It's still confusing to have half a dozen parameters, all of them with
useful descriptive names, and then one that's just "parameter". "A hold
is defined by 6 parameters: a fix, a radial, whether it's left-handed or
right-handed, whether the radial defines the inbound or outbound leg,
the length of an individual leg, and a parameter" - uh, wait, what, so
what is this magical 'parameter' about that you're not telling me
anything more specific?

> > So, idk, `hold_distance_mode`, maybe?
> 
> Maybe I’m confused now - I thought this was: the hold time, for a
> time-based hold, and the hold distance, for a distance-based hold?
> Have I misunderstood?

I thought we were talking about hold_by, which just indicates whether
hold_time_or_distance holds a time in seconds or a distance in nautical
miles. hold_time_or_distance is as good as it gets as far as names go, I
think; the alternative I thought of would be hold_leg_length, but I
don't think that's much better.