In a syntax summary -- what if one argument is a list of name-value pairs?

Subject: In a syntax summary -- what if one argument is a list of name-value pairs?
From: David Castro <thetechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 08:41:11 -0700 (PDT)


> I am documenting a family of APIs in the world of C and Visual Basic....
> Many of the arguments to the functions are optional, offering default
> values. Some are simple flags (true or false), some can take one of a short
> list of values, and some take an expression (such as a file name, or a
> formatting string).

> Now, I have a syntax summary appendix, which the reader who is acquainted
> enough with the API would use as a handy reminder about the signature of any
> function. BUT, the down side of a BatchArgs argument is that my summary
> appendix shows only that such functions USE a BatchArgs argument, but gives
> no clue about which of the (scores of) names are acceptable in it.

I'm not sure I *totally* understand what you mean, and I come from a
Delphi/Java background (more Java than Delphi of late), but if I was going to
use an API function, I'd definitely want to know what the signatures are for
it. It seems to me that you can use the standardized syntax to show the
variable-ness of the various elements (with the {} symbols), and could provide
a list of all of the various signatures supported. That way, your readers could
search through the elements in each signature, and find the one that contains
all of the elements that they want to specify, and use that one.

If I'm way off here, feel free to contact me off-list. It's been a few years
since I have worked with a product that had API documentation (and even that,
fellow listmember Martha Kolman actually owned the API doc), but I could
certainly tell you what *I* would want when I'm wearing my programmer hat.

-David Castro
email[at]davidcastro[dot]com
http://jsp.davidcastro.com

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