minivend documentation (WAS: Re: [mv] IF tag: [if session login] doesn't work?)

["Bill Randle" <billr@exgate.tek.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from "Bill Randle" <billr@exgate.tek.com>     ******

On Mar 23, 10:51pm, Birgitt Funk wrote:
} Subject: Re: [mv] IF tag: [if session login] doesn't work?
} ******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk
<birgitt@booktraders.com>     ******
}
} On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Mike Heins wrote:
}
} > ******    message to minivend-users from Mike Heins <mikeh@minivend.com>
    ******

[snip]

} > Of course there are exceptions; see the outstanding job someone (Bill
} > Randle) did the other day helping me document the error tag.
}
} May be it is just very simple... there are not that many who can do a job
} like Bill Randle did the other day... Couldn't it be that you just over-
} estimate the capabilities of many of your MV users ?

I appreciate the kudo's, but I didn't do anything extraordianry (I didn't
think so, at least). I just looked at the source code for the [error]
tag, found all the places $opt->{someoptname} was used and wrote down
what it appeared to do. I had no idea what all [error] did before I
wrote than down.

I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that can read Perl - even if
you don't consider yourself a strong programmer in it.

Just to follow up on Mike's earlier suggestion, how about this challenge:
for those of you that feel capable, the next time you come across a
minivend tag that you're not quite sure about, take a look at the source.
Write down the list of options (things referenced by $opt->{somename})
and a brief synopsis of what it looks like it does. Post your summary
to the mailing list.

Don't worry if it's not dead-on 100% accurate - it's probably pretty
close. The thing I've found in writing documentation over the years
is it's a *lot* easier to take an outline of something and clean it
up than it is to come up with the initial text. It's also a much
reduced load on the documentation person (in this case Mike). He
doesn't have to spend the time to go thru the docs and ask himself
what needs more verbage or description and what doesn't. If what
he gets from the mailing list looks good, he can add a few words
around it and paste it in the docs.

Maybe this would be a good use for the afore mentioned minivend-docs
mailing list [in which case I guess I'd have to subscribe :-)].

	-Bill Randle
	Tektronix, Inc,.
	billr@exgate.tek.com

P.S. If you do decide to take up my challenge, you'll find most of the
tags are handled in <minivend-root>/lib/Vend/Interpolate.pm. The
functions are typically named "tag_xxx" where the xxx part is the
tag name. E.g. tag_error, tag_data. If you don't find it there, look
in Parse.pm. There's a giant table in there that has the tag name
and a reference the module/function that handles that tag
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