RDP: Ren'Py Documentation Project

[PyTom]

I've decided to spend my Ren'Py time this week working on documentation - spending all my Ren'Py time for the rest of the year improving the manual, both by documenting the new features, porting over content from the old manual, and writing new sections, as necessary.

Yesterday (12/26), I documented the new Drag and Drop system:

http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/drag_drop.html

Today (12/27), I wrote a new section on python expressions that wasn't in the manual:

http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/langu ... ion-syntax

and (re)wrote a section on dialogue and narration.

http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/dialogue.html


If people want to contribute to the RDP, there are several ways:

* Writing new sections to be added to the manual.
* Proofreading what I've written.
* Implementing some of what is discussed, and taking screenshots to be added to the manual. (Be aware of the screenshot size, since the manual is distributed as part of the download.)

Also, very specifically, I could use some example characters. So if people could scour their games for interesting character definitions and post them here, I'd appreciate it.

[SusanTheCat]

Does there exist a Ren'py API? Or even list of all the objects and functions available?

Susan

[PyTom]

Today (12/28), I wrote the documentation for the new sprite system.

http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/sprites.html

This is intended for relatively advanced programmers.

SusanTheCat>>> Right now, the Ren'Py API is a combination of what's documented in the new manual and the reference manual.

[PyTom]

RDP moves on, as today (12/29) I wrote the documentation for the non-image-manipulator displayables:

http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/displayables.html

As I'm going through, I'm sort of editing the documentation to reflect what I think the modern usage of Ren'Py should be. So there are several displayables (or other things, like options) that are implemented in Ren'Py for compatibility purposes, that are no longer documented. These might disappear on a future compatibility-breaking release, like one that adds Python 3 support to Ren'Py.

Of course, if you have a different idea of what's important, let me know. (Also, just because something is missing right now, it's not a cause for concern - especially if it's in one of the areas I haven't documented yet.)

Right now, the whole documentation source is 52,589 words long. That includes 6,308 words of license text, much of which comes from people other than me.

[PyTom]

After taking 12/30 off to go make http://www.moemash.com/ , I spent today (12/31) finishing up the displayable documentation. So:

http://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/displayables.html

is now done, and I hope an improvement over the previous documentation. I expect to do at least another page of documentation before 6.12's release, but I'm not going to block other things on it anymore.

Happy new year, and I'll do my 2010 in review post tomorrow.