Re: Program structure of Pstricks, what is its basic structure?

[crashedandburnt1@hotmail.com (Crashedandburnt)]

Timothy Van Zandt Prof of Economics, INSEAD <tvz@stern.nyu.edu>
writes:

> Sorry, but that is malicious slander, and so asinine I'm not sure I
> should lower myself to a response. pstricks has quite extensive
> documentation besides the user's guide. The file pstricks.doc documents
> the main source code and various other extensions have some
> documentation. I don't have anything I've never released.

First, the preamble:

1;; The civilized mode of discussion is without name calling and
without ego.
    Unfortunately, the Achilles Heel of the academia is ego. Often
grad students fired
    for ego. Often junior faculty losing tenure for ego. The more
"prestigeous" the
    institution, princeton, harvard, the more the ego disease. Often
forgetting
    that academia is financed on donations and professorship is a
privilege,
    not a God given right and to be used as a launchpad for business.

    Supporting opinions on some of the points following p147 in
    http://www.dreamsongs.com/NewFiles/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf

2;; Actions speak louder than words. This is a public forum. We have
    arguments and counterarguments, hopefully in a civilized manner.
    Hopefully, agreements too.

3;; I would gladly apologize if you have satisfactory documentation.
Neither
    I can prove my phone conversation, nor you can deny it. We have no
proof like
    Ms Tripp had on Monica affair. I would apologize gladly to certify
    that this is good package with documentation that
    would allow others to go around customizing for their own use or
learning
    from its source. Although a comment per line of code is not too
much,
    I do not hold your package to this standard.

4;; It is fine to make reasonable money. The issue is to have the
manifest,
    clear, loud and open. Not fine print hidden recursively. Bait and
    switch should not be done. If money is the objective it should be
stated.

5;; This preamble is not an accusation or directed to any person
    and do not get angry. I hope replies have not been initiated
before this point.

6;; I would gladly write the doc if the author provides me with the
info. I
    have contributed money to FSF at their booth when I saw their
documentation
    effort. I help anonymously. We all know that there are numerous
unsung heros
    of free software movement. Certainly, it is impossible to refer to
them
    individually and it is easiest to give credit to them collectively
by naming
    Stallman. But to ask me to write the doc by figuring it out is
plain mischief.

End preamble.

I recall, you said in the conversation that you spent "just too much
time" on it.
The feeling I got was that it was too much time to be warranted. While
I was
not sure of your name spelling, I can see from your post that I
recalled
it correctly. I see that you also have a user guide of 76 or so pages
or
page pairs. Is it not a good idea to put a 5 to 10 page document to
explain
how the package works and tie everything together? I will try to find
the
pstricks.doc file. From the extension name it
may be MS word file (I do not use MS word) or just a
.doc extension. But if the former, I can perhaps apply strings command
to
get the ascii or find some converter. 

But the point is that when one spends
so much time on writing a package, refining it and then writing about
76 page
pairs of user manual, it is not much effort to document the workings
of the
package for others to learn and benefit from, since it was put in the
public domain. 

In the coming days, the ability of people to explain the subject
of this thread will itself testify how well it is documented.