My Generation Documentation

[sbc]

At the moment the documentation (Help >> Documentation) links to the website, perhaps an offline version (CHM file?) would be a good idea? System Requirements probably don't need be listed in the offline version (as if you are reading it, you already meet the requirements)

You could always have links to the website within the documentation - i.e. a link to latest documentation, templates, forums etc

It would allow users to read the documentation if they are offline (i.e. working on a laptop)

EDIT: Also perhaps the ZeusReference offline (containing examples as well)

A possible useful feature for Zeus - a prepend method for ZeusOutput - that way you can generate your entities and add data to the beginning of the file (for quicker editing - it is easier to start from the beginning than scroll down to your code). One could generate the entities and then create a new template that adds comments to the top of the page (i.e. for documenting examples - which you may only want on your local copies)

Hope this would not be too much work.

[mike.griffin]

Yes, I agree, in todays build 0919b both MyMeta and dOOdads have offline .CHM files, Justin has mentioned Zues as well, he's making big changes in that area so after that would be a good time. Your comments are right on target, we need Zues and overall MyGeneration help, we're working on it as you can see (a new .CHM in the latest build). Just to give you an idea I was up till 3:00 in the morning and then in work at my real job by 8:00, that's about 4 hours sleep if that. And I know Justin does the same, we're moving as fast as we can.

[sbc]

As long as it does not effect your days jobs. I'm sure you will get to a stage where there will be a lot less work to do on MyGeneration (mainly bug fixes and minor features)

You do have to spend time to save time (i.e. like developing macros for word and templates for MyGeneration).

If you ever get a plugin architecture and the tool becomes a lot more popular I am sure people will help by developing plugins (i.e. for additional scripting languages - Perl, Python; and other databases)

[mike.griffin]

Something akin (but not quite) to a plug in Architecture is going to be released soon, my hopes is that this will allow folks to help us add more functionality.

[Marc Sommer]

That's funny. I went through a lot of code generating tools and never have been lucky with them. But it seems most of the ideas and wishes I had are beeing realized by you without ever been mentioned. I even thought of doing it myself, but this probably would lead me into much troubles and time killing, as I do not have enough experience to complish the rather difficult tasks. So I am very happy with mygeneration and hope it goes into the right direction. (templated code generator with a plugin architecture, robust framework and growing template collection, a crossing over of vbexpress (template based, huge template collection, nice gui), codesmith (template based, growing community (!) ,plugin architecture) and pragmatier (for their custom hooks, I like this).

Thanks for your work, I appreciate it very much, I would like to say this.


Marc Sommer

[justin.greenwood]

The new and improved Zeus (the template parser/engine) will include an interface for scripting engine plugins. This will allow anyone to implement thier own scripting engine if they wish. To add a plugin, the plugin DLL will have to be dropped into the MyGeneration folder and an entry added to a config file.

Also, objects can be made available to all MyGeneration scripts by simply adding entries into a config file with a variable name, assembly name and a classpath. The class must have a constructor with no parameters.

Expect to see this available in the next few weeks...