I recently looked at yi again after having some trouble installing it a year ago. I think that the lack of documentation is a real problem, there is a lot of functionality already available somewhere deep down in the modules, but it took me quite a few hours to get the haddock documentation for the latest version, which then explained why my configuration wasn't working in the latest version, because the API was changed a bit from the last online available haddock.
I think that it already makes a very good Haskell editor and probably also a good general purpose text editor. But configuring or writing small extensions to it still needs more time than it should, especially if caveats for installation/documentation generation are not written down in the Wiki and/or are outdated, if sample configuration files are kept to a bare minimum and are hidden in the repository. I liked the tutorials I found on http://www.nobugs.org/developer/yi/example-helloworld.html but they are also for an older version. If you want to join the development team a report of the architecture might be a good first read. If you want start hack your new editor, you might be more interested in some nice tutorials and a lot of examples, and some documentation what to expect to be broken with the next update. That said, I'm not even intending any critique on anybody actually dedicating time to develop yi, it's a great effort you're doing. It's more explaining what in my experience stopped me actually using it, and thus also stopped me from contributing. I think that it has the potential to get a much broader user basis and therefore automatically a lot more contributers. If I get some progress with my configuration I might write some tutorials for the latest version and post them somewhere. Best, Malte On Aug 28, 12:13 pm, Jean-Philippe Bernardy <berna...@chalmers.se> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo > > <mle...@mega-nerd.com> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > I am having a look a Yi and was wondering if there was any documentation. > > > Specifically, Yi depends on a relatively large number of somewhat > > obscure Haskell libraries (eg fingertree, pointedlist, rosezipper > > etc). What are these libraries used for? > > * fingertree: the buffer is stored in a fingertree of bytestrings > (utf8-encoded) > * pointedlist: can't remember (but a pointed list is a simple > structure; it's not a "big" dependency) > * rosezipper: as far as I remember this is used for the "ide" part of > Yi, which I am afraid has become > dead wood. > > > Yi is also supposed to be configurable. Is there any documentation > > on that? > > Finally is there any design documentation that explains how this > > thing is put together? > > The basics are outlined in my old > report:http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/cpl/record/index.xsql?pubid=72549 > > Details have changed, but the overall picture remains. > > Cheers, > JP. -- Yi development mailing list yi-devel@googlegroups.com http://groups.google.com/group/yi-devel
