[ADMB Users] ADMB reference manual(s)

[Arni Magnusson]

Hi Jeff,

When you say Reference Manual, do you mean a comprehensive annotated list 
of everything there is in ADMB?

The ADMB Project has used Doxygen to produce a comprehensive list of all 
ADMB-related classes and member functions:

   http://admb-project.org/documentation/api/functions_func.html

It feels very robotic and crowded, but it is exhaustive and always up to 
date. The Doxygen documentation will be more useful as we embed more 
Doxygen comments in the code. Even in its current state, it can be a 
valuable reference when specific questions arise, especially when 
contributing to ADMB itself or writing advanced models. I think the 
ADMB/ADMB-RE User Guides should cover everything needed for basic and 
intermediate modelling.

Doxygen can also write a massive PDF reference, but I find the web 
interface much easier to navigate.

Please feel free to point out specific shortcomings in the User's Guide 
and in the Doxygen reference. Better still, contribute. The 
http://admb-project.org/developers/contribute-documentation page has 
guidelines on how to contribute Doxygen comments. Writing Doxygen comments 
for existing functions has been listed as a priority, e.g. in the 2010 
meeting report 
(http://admb-project.org/developers/admb-meeting-march-29-31/ADMBMeetingReportv3.pdf).

---

Finally, the keyword list

http://admb-project.org/developers/contribute-documentation/functions/keywords.txt/view

may also provide an overview of the kind one would hope to find in a 
reference manual.

All the best,

Arni



On Thu, 15 Nov 2012, Jeff Laake wrote:

> You are quite welcome.
>
> [...]
>
> I'm an old fashioned programmer with the emphasis on old, and I'm used 
> to reading Reference Manuals rather than User's Guide.  I was rather 
> disappointed that there was no Reference Manual/Syntax specification and 
> it has slowed my learning because I don't learn as quickly from 
> examples.
>
> [...]
>
>
>
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2012, Arni Magnusson wrote:
>
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> On behalf of the ADMB Core Team, I want to thank you for this excellent 
>> contribution and a constructive discussion on the mailing list.
>>
>> The example is well documented and runs without a hitch.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Arni
>