This suggestion pertain to creating a very powerful documentation system within visual assist.
VA maintains a database of all the symbols in the program. If we hover over the symbol, a tooltip appears displaying the comments around that symbol.
The idea is to maintain a seperate file for each project which will be linked via visual assist to the this file.
This external file will contain advanced documentation related to each symbol in the program. This can even include images. So for example suppose i have a function called drawCone(). I'll right click on it and choose "Add advanced comment". A dialog box will open allowing me to choose an image and add some text (like examples of drawSphere()'s usage) to that dialog box.
Now, if i hover over drawSphere() for 2 secs normal comment would appear, and if i keep it for more than 4 seconds this advanced comment would apper. Or maybe pressing a special key would show this comment.
The user can take this advanced comment file and share it within projects so that once i have created advanced documentation for a symbol - be it a function, a variable or a class - i dont need to do it for any other project which uses the same identifier.
The advantages can be tremendrous. We can create such advanced documents for entire libraries (or just relevent or frequently used parts of it) and when teams are working on that library they dont need to dig in the documentation.
When VA grows in popularity to such an extent that it becomes an "industry standard" then the library providers would create such "advanced documents" file for their libraries themselves so that the user don't have to create it themselves. Also, it will be extremly easy to jump in any alien code base and start getting used to it.
It will become a standard file format for multimedia comment documenting.
Heres a quick mockup of what the feature could look like when implimented.
Topic Locked
Posted - Sep 06 2004 : 06:28:12 AM
Also, it will be extremly easy to jump in any alien code base and start getting used to it.
