[AccessD] Embedded Documentation

John Colby jwcolby at ColbyConsulting.com
Thu Mar 2 05:51:18 CST 2006


One of the issues that I have with overview documentation is that it is not
internal to the object being documented.  I document my modules, my
functions, even lines of functions, but "overview" documents and theory, WHY
and HOW the big picture is implemented and works just doesn't fall neatly
into a module.  Furthermore if you were to document that in a module you
have to use comments which is a PITA.

So, for example, I would like to embed a text document into a field in a
table, then be able to quickly and easily edit that document using an
external word processor, but have the external word processor actually
update the data live in the table.  Is this possible?

While thinking about that I also thought about the issue of having to put
"remark" characters in documentation in modules.  For example if you want to
place an overview of a module in the module header, you have to place '
characters in front of every line to turn it into a comment.  This works but
you have to place that ' at the beginning of each line, and if you want to
rearrange the text you are inserting / deleting these ' characters as you
move stuff around.

It occurred to me that perhaps you could "bracket" the documentation with a
conditional compile #if then to cause the bracketed info to be ignored by
the compiler.  This does appear to work, for example:

#If Something Then
This is a test of my ability to add documentation without the remark
character
#End If

Compiles without error because "Something" was never set true.
Unfortunately it DOES cause the JIT interpreter to evaluate the text every
time you hit the carriage return and tells you that you have a compile
error.  Perhaps as (or more) intrusive as the ' characters.  Sigh.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 





More information about the AccessD mailing list