Re: [Nova-developer] Documentation for libnova

[Liam G. <li...@gn...>]

Hi Mike,

On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 22:57 +1300, Mike McGavin wrote:

> Is this an appropriate place to discuss libnova?  There doesn't seem
> to be an obvious mailing list or forum attached to it that I can find,
> and the project seems quite strongly connected to this one.  If
> there's a better place, please accept my apologies (and let me know).
> 

This is the best place atm.

> I was wondering if there's presently a documentation effort for
> libnova, besides the Doxygen comments.  I'm quite keen to attempt to
> familiarise myself with the code and write some kind of getting
> started guide to explain, in some kind of logical sequence, what
> people need to do to use the library effectively.
> 

We only have an examples directory atm. It would be nice to get some
proper docs though.

> I've been working on my own ephemeris library for a few months,
> primarily as an effort to learn more about ephemeris in general.  I
> forked my own code from the Astrolabe project that was released ages
> ago by Bill McClain, but I've also been reading up in several books
> (including Meeus) to help understand what's going on.  I launced my
> own code as a GPL'd project a little while ago, but it's very
> incomplete and somewhat buggy, and my main motivation was that I
> wasn't aware of anyone else doing the same thing under GPL.  Having
> discovered libnova a few weeks ago, I've been wondering if it'd make
> more sense to try to get involved somehow in what you're doing here
> instead.
> 
> I haven't thought this whole documentation thing through in detail,
> but it's something I'd like to try in my spare time (which I'll
> hopefully find) if it would fit the project.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 

This would be very helpful, as the subject matter is very difficult for
beginners to understand (it's even difficult if you have a copy of
Meeus).

How do you propose doing this ? Would you use doxygen or do you have
another documentation system in mind ?

Thanks

Liam