To: mozilla-general@mozilla.org
From: Pat Gunn <pgunn01@ibm.net>
Subject: Re: How successful has Open Source been?
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 16:30:52 -0400

Thierry Bezecourt wrote:
> At 18:53 04/06/98 -0400, Pat Gunn wrote:
> >Although many patches and stuff have been submitted, another very
> >useful side effect of the mozilla project is the availability of
> >information needed to produce exact documentation to the common
> >person, and the increased availability to Netscape developers to
> >us. For example, with the source open, Netscape has the support
> >and interest of many in the open source community, and people can
> >finally see how things work, and produce better documentation
> >with a greater chance of someone correcting it if it's wrong because
> >we have an easily accessed authorative method to determine how
> >Mozilla does something (being the source, as well as lots of
> >Netscape engineers).
> 
> Are there projects in that domain ? For the moment, I feel there is not yet
> a lot of documentation about the source code. The documentation newsgroup
> is very quiet, and, if I'm correct, its purpose was to discuss about the
> the software documentation, not the source code documentation.

1) Yes. Check some of the links in my FAQ
2) More will arrive in the future. In order to document, one
	must first understand and be authoritative.

I haven't yet seen some of the things that I'd like to see yet,
but I'm sure someone out there will be working on it (or maybe
I will if I can find some people to help me maintain my existing
documentation).
I'd love to see a big webpage that does a subsystem-oriented
analysis of the code, with each subsystem fully documented and
information about interesting changes, current bugs, etc. in
it. For example:

Subsystem: Libpref
Location: mozilla/modules/libpref
Purpose: Load and maintain preferences in Mozilla
Nature: Mixture of Javascript and C++, has resources
Analysis: Libpref is responsable for loading and saving
	preferences, and is composed of a Javascript
	parser and a C++ interface that moves the aquired
	preferences to/from the browser's memory space.
	Libpref also has some resources that can be
	modified to set default preferences or lock
	certain preferences so the user cannot change
	them.
Com/Moz: Communicator has the capability of being automatically
	configured by Netscape MissionControl, whereas Mozilla
	currently cannot.
Directory structure:
	admin -- does blah blah blah
	friend -- does blah blah blah
	src -- Most of the source code
		init -- resources to customize defaults and
			lock preferences
	doc -- Documentation (None exists currently (except this!))
	l10n -- Localization stuff
	public -- interface to rest of Mozilla (?)
Algorythmic overview:
	Libpref does blah blah blah, using ternary trees (yes,
	I completely made this bit here up, but this is the kind of
	detail we should have so we can reuse code that implements
	certain kinds of data structures and/or remove them when
	nothing uses them anymore), blah blah
Bugs:
	Currently Mozilla cannot be controlled by anything like
	MissionControl. Additionally, blah blah blah blah
Notes about the source:
	edwin -- blah blah blah blah
	shaver -- blah blah blah
	pgunn01 -- blah blah
Implementation notes
	blah blah blah used javascript blah blah performance?
	blah blah
Mozilla.org owner:
	Edwin Akoi
Projects underway:
	http:// blah blah blah blah

That would be an ideal form to have something like that in..


-- 
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Pat Gunn, moderator:comp.sys.newton.announce
comoderator:comp.os.os2.moderated
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -- Dr Who
http://junior.apk.net/~qc
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