John Torjo wrote:
Yes - my problem is that each person seems to have a different opinion of what "simple case". However, what I'll do is this: - have a few simple cases, and write the code for them - minimize the number of lines I write in order to meet a certain case - question: what do you think it's a reasonable number of lines, for a simple case? I'd go for 5-10 lines of code.
About those simple cases : the problem is that I have my own simple cases - which might not be what you want. So, if you have your great simple case, shout!
On a side-note - I'll make a couple of web pages where I'll split the work to be done. Then, you all are most welcome to comment on them.
My example of a simple case might be something like this: I want to log to a file, with three levels of logging. So I might want to do the following (just an example! Not trying to mandate an interface or anything): #include <boost/log.hpp> using namespace boost; using namespace boost::log; log<to_file<some_template_tricks>> my_log(warning); // some function { my_log(error)<<"Error! Something went wrong!"; } The some_template_tricks is just there because you can't put string literals in a template - if we had to make our own streams and template them, that would be okay. And the use of warning and error are just error-checking conditions - if I construct it with warning as the parameter, then only stuff that's a warning level or more serious can be logged. I would define a concept to indicate a set of conditions and allow those to be passed in as a template parameter. If you look at the kind of genericism in multi_index, that is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of - lots of stuff that's easily avoided if you don't need it, but generic and powerful if you do. As for the documentation, I think that Doxygen is fine, but things need to be sorted better, and the reuse of identifiers in lots of different namespaces definitely hurts. Especially when it comes to linkage - you have names in the documentation that are mislinked because you have them in 4 different namespaces and Doxygen can't figure out which one you are trying to refer to. Long names aren't too much of an issue, particularly in types. If something can be typedefed away, then it makes stuff look good and has the nice scoping to go with it. I really want to see a logging library in boost, as boost is frequently the first place I look for a nice, reliable, portable library. It's definitely something I would like to see in the future, because I really want to have a nice interface that I don't end up reinventing every time I start a new project. Sean