Styles documentation update

[foxfirefey]

So, as a recap after about a week of work, there are now two main documentation bodies springing up for S2. I think there's currently enough space both for beginner and more advanced level documentation within those two sets.

S2 Guide: The Language Tutorial is filling out nicely as a first draft. However, the more I work at it in its current state, the more I think it's going to need to be rearranged for better flow at teaching beginners. The Style System Overview has a little bit of content, but is still kind of clunky. But the Troubleshooting section has some pretty awesome stuff right now, if I do say so myself. Haven't yet started on the Core2 Overview, Backend, Glossary, or Language Reference (a more concise version of the Language Tutorial, for cheatsheet checking or referral by people who already know programming).

S2 Cookbook: This starts out with a testbed layout that lets people have a really simple environment to test out code bits. A couple example pages starting to get filled in are strings and on Dates.

Other miscellanea:

* matgb has pointed out that the advanced page points to defunct documentation URLs. What's worse, the layout editor does, too. Hopefully we can point it at the S2 guide instead, or the core2 layer documentation.
* Doing this documentation has also given me several ideas for built in functions to add. For instance, S2 has a split function for strings, but no "join" function for string arrays. Why is there no join function! Does anybody have any input on that?
* Some people have already been diving in to tweaking and editing! Thank you murklins and azurelunatic for your assistance. And thank you everybody who gave your input on the last post on this topic!
* ninetydegrees has some suggestions up regarding this area: Your Layers page: redesign layers table as a tree , Styles: Add links to Your Layers, and Improve the S2 Compiler. They're making me think that instead of wee changes, each area should just go through a redesign. What do you envision the advanced customization area operating like?

Comments

[murklins]

afuna can correct me if I'm wrong here, but regarding the split function and its missing opposite, I think what may have happened there was that LJ's S2 string class was seriously deficient, so an effort was made to improve the string functions, specifically. In LJ, we constantly bemoaned the way we had to iterate over each character of a string in order to do the simplest string operations, so when the opportunity came to give the string class some useful methods, it was really exciting! I may have wept a little. So possibly, through all the joyful tears, no one noticed that arrays of strings were now missing the natural complement of split.

PS If you want to dole out any other tasks to me, I am more than willing to tackle something.

[fu]

Yes, pretty much! We can add it in, but it's much easier to implement a for loop that does a join, than a for-loop that does a split, so I think that one just got forgotten...

[murklins]

I think I... miss talking about S2. Look at all that rambling I did up there! I had to make a custom layer the other day -- it was very exciting. And also FULL OF COMPILATION ERRORS.

[fu]

HEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I kinda miss talking about s2, too. Like, just making it do all kinds of ridiculous things and... stuff. Or utilitarian things, which ultimately end up being ridiculous. Stuff!

"May your compiler errors be exciting"? ;-)

[murklins]

Yes, I definitely ended up at ridiculous. You should look at scans_daily, where each entry says "View our Delicious tags for this post". If you click, you'll see how I made a frankenstein-like combination of Delicious, PHP, JSON and S2. Also I made a Greasemonkey script and a Chrome extension (my first!) for people who didn't want to have to click through to another page to see the tags. I am thinking of documenting the whole process in a post, so that everyone can see the truly silly things I get up to when no one is there to stop me.

[fu]

Ahahaha that is ridiculous. Also completely awesome <3

[foxfirefey]

Oh man, the other day? I managed to fake a while loop in S2, I kid you not.

[murklins]

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. FANTASTIC.

[foxfirefey]

Behold:

var int[] counting = [0];

var int index = 1;
foreach var int k ($counting) {
    print $k + "\n";
    $counting[$index] = $index;
    $index++;
}

Now, it'll stop when the style hits its rendering time limit, but it's definitely a while loop! You just need to put the condition around the part that adds the new item to the array and increments the position, and voila, while loop.

[murklins]

That's ingenious! Ridiculous, but ingenious! :D

[foxfirefey]

That sounds pretty realistic! I just don't see why we shouldn't have a join function, as it'd be easy to implement and oh-so-useful!

Would you like to start doing some cookbook recipes? Generally what I do is come up with a short code example that works in the testbed layout for each section! (That might not work for all needed examples, for instance the Page ones, but it's a start.)

[murklins]

And having join would bring S2 a little more into line with other languages, which makes it more intuitive for people who are programmers already, and a more portable skill for people for whom it is their very first language.

Cookbook recipes sound good! I'll start poking around tomorrow.