[q2x] OT: Lua questions

[Nick Trout]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Hook [mailto:hook_l at pyrogon.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 11:53 AM
> To: q2x at icculus.org
> Subject: RE: [q2x] OT: Lua questions
> 
> > do get an error... Bah, that isn't in the wiki tutorial yet!
> 
> The more I try to use Lua, the more pissed I get at the documentation
> =( It's like Luiz and Roberto et. al. just don't give a shit about
> encouraging people to use their stuff, it drives me up a fucking wall.
> 
> It would take someone maybe a full day to write a decent introduction
> to Lua that didn't get side tracked into too many details, yet they
> haven't taken the time to do it, and I'm sorry, relying on the
> community for this is just wrong.
> 
> cf. my article at www.bookofhook.com on "Tips for Open Source
> Developers" for more =)

I did read that :)

Have you read the papers on Lua? They are quite informative, and the
book has taken Roberto some time and effort, so I can't wholly agree
that there are no docs and they have spent no time on docs.

The docs for Lua are very concise and excellent. There is no bloat,
which makes it very quick to find anything. There are only 3 of them (2
really) maintaining Lua, and Lua is not a full time project (I think) so
they dedicate all their time to improving the language. I have learnt
most of what I know through experimenting (http://doris.sf.net/) and the
lua-l list.

Where I do agree with you is that there is a serious lack of docs for
the C API. I will try hard to find some time to do this but I'm very
busy. I do agree that poor documentation can degrade otherwise excellent
work. One of the first things I look for in a software project is decent
documentation also. AFAIK my wiki docs are the most complete syntax
introduction. All the other docs I've seen are partial or lacking in
information.

Nick