[Rails] (Online) documentation for 1.0

[Johan Sörensen]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:42:40 -0000 (GMT), mike at wormers.net
<mike at wormers.net> wrote:
> As a newcomer to Rails (less than 2 days so Im not sure Im qualified to
> comment), I think the OnLamp is good as far as it goes. But what I
>  think would be really usefull is documentation along the lines of the
> 'Design Patterns' GoF book. That would be the most succinct way of
> explaining to newbies the most common patterns in the system. Common
>  'cookbook' solutions would be great too. e.g. this is how you create a
> login system, this is how you push back an image, etc..

Yes, I think the current documentation "gems" (no relation to
rubygems) is a little too spread out, making it hard(er) for newcomers
to find the relevant/good stuff.

In my opinion a good documentation system should look something like this:


* Installation
* General info about the framework, methodlogies for developing with
it, how it all connects/works together
* Detailed information about each framework, its concepts, how you work with it
** specific info on certain things, such as Routes, caching etc
* "Typical problems/solutions" - eg. cookbook-style texts on best
practices for security, performance and so on
* ...
(All of those is currently intervened between the wiki, the hierki
manuals and the various READMEs. Collecting those, and keeping them up
to date would be a fair amount of work, but beneficial to users)
* Method/class reference, not much unlike rails.rubyonrails.com is
today, but with searching abilities etc (I guess that goes for
everything)

Or is the general consensus that what is currently there is "good enough"?

-j