[RMMV] Online community documentation

[Zalerinian]

Online Community Documentation



You've asked for it, and now it's just about here! I've spent about half of this past week building this website for the community to submit documentation on the code for others to view. Right now, everyone has the power to make a suggestion as to what the documentation for a function should be. I will have to check back every once in a while to review the suggestions, and put in place the ones that best-fit the function. This does mean that suggestions you make will not appear right after you make them, but instead will be submitted to the database for my review. I have set up a poll, however asking for your opinion. Should the suggestions require moderation by me to put them in place, or should the changes take effect immediately?

Pros

• Changes will take effect in real-time.
  

Cons

• Two people editing the same function at the same time will make the more recent submission take the place of any previous suggestion.
  
• Someone could be a troll and change everything to be unhelpful, and there wouldn't be much that could be done about it, as I don't have time to implement a documentation history feature. The best I could do is have all submissions stored separately, and I'd have to roll them back manually.
  

In the future, I plan to update the website and make it better, allowing for people to submit plugins and have them documented by the community there, because let's face it. As much as we want plugin developers to document their code so we understand how it works, and not just how to use it, not many people do that. This planned update would allow the community to document the plugins, allowing future developers easy access to see how other plugins work.

And so, without further ado, here you go! The community documentation site!
Please note: The address of the site recently changed, so the link above may bring you to the old version. If this is the case, please follow this link to get access to the site. The content is the same, however the web address is slightly different. In the future, all requests to this domain will be forwarded to the one above.

If you have any recommendations for the site, please post them here, however given my tight schedule, I can't get to anything too complicated. I am debating about adding a feature later today about how many pieces of documentation have been submitted for a given function, so people can see what has already received suggestions.



EDIT: I'm on my phone, so forgive me if the formatting gets butchered. I had forgotten to mention that in the Menu of the site, you'll find a link to MV's manual. On the top of the screen is a custom search box, powered by Google. While it isn't perfect, this can help you search the manual for what you're looking for. The search box was added yesterday, so it may not have every page I deed yet, please be patient while Google scans the manual. Once it's all scanned, the search box should help you navigate the manual.


EDIT: Due to a lack of knowledge on my part, and leaving my server easily vulnerable to mischievous people, I'll need to shut it down for a while. Sadly I'm quite busy at the moment and don't have the time to set things right at the moment, so I'm going to have to just shut the server down until the issues can be fixed. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. The manual still may be available through online through Cloudflare, a service which caches my website in the event that the server is unavailable. If not, the manual is still available with your locally installed copy of RPG Maker MV. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

 

[Tsukihime]

Start with moderation.


1. Allows you to build guidelines


2. Provides examples for others to base their own formatting on


I like consistency for the most part if I'm reading docs.


As for suggestions, having a package tree on the side would be nice.


Like this https://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/nightlies/docs/api/


But it's Java so I don't know if you can do that in Javascript.


Just some way to quickly jump from class to class


I would also like some way to automatically link to a different class or method if the docs refer to it.


For example, if I write "Game_Battler" then something automatically sees that as a keyword and converts it into a link to the Game_Battler page.

 

[Zalerinian]

As for suggestions, having a package tree on the side would be nice.

Like this https://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/nightlies/docs/api/

But it's Java so I don't know if you can do that in Javascript.

Just some way to quickly jump from class to class

I don't really know about package trees necessarily in this, since these are all pretty much separate classes, but I could have the menu modified to include a link to every class. It'll get quite big, though. I would love to be able to integrate searching in the menu for classes, but I just don't have the time to make a search system that isn't terrible.

I would also like some way to automatically link to a different class or method if the docs refer to it.

For example, if I write "Game_Battler" then something automatically sees that as a keyword and converts it into a link to the Game_Battler page.

I suppose this wouldn't be too difficult to implement, though it wouldn't be in the textbox that you type in a suggestion in. That's just a basic text box, nothing fancy.

 

[Tsukihime]

I don't really know about package trees necessarily in this, since these are all pretty much separate classes, but I could have the menu modified to include a link to every class. It'll get quite big, though. I would love to be able to integrate searching in the menu for classes, but I just don't have the time to make a search system that isn't terrible.

There's definitely some inheritance tree going on with PIXI.Sprite --> Sprite --> Sprite_Base, etc.


So it won't exactly be a package tree but I guess an inheritance tree.


It would be nice to visualize these things, but I'm not sure how common it is in documentation.


Searching would be useful I guess, though I typically just use my text editor's search functionality to search all files in the project.

I suppose this wouldn't be too difficult to implement, though it wouldn't be in the textbox that you type in a suggestion in. That's just a basic text box, nothing fancy.

You might provide a feature that allows users to press a button to automatically add links or something.


I'm not sure how it would be implemented.

 

[K.L.R.G.]

This is really great. I got so annoyed by having to scroll through all these walls of text to find anything. This is worth it for visibility-sake alone! 

 

[GE_Peter]

Umm, neither of the links work. Is it still there?

 

[Zalerinian]

Well, neither of the links work, so no, it hasn't been there for a while. No one used it and I had an unfortunate issue with the server where I had to reset it. Since no one used it, I never bothered to put it back.