Online RSSDK Documentation Issues

[Lance_R_]

To Whom It May Concern,

It would be extremely helpful to maintain a better system of organization and maintenance for your RSSDK online documentation, Intel.  I've carefully gone through a delicate process of installing (as of today) the most recent editions of all the RealSense packages, R3 being the latest release, and making sure I have the latest version of the DCM.  My camera is, thankfully, working properly after completely removing the R2 installation and restarting Windows 8.1 before installing any other components.  On a side note, the "Welcome To RealSense" program prompted me with an update later, which I installed.  I didn't uninstall "Wave Warriors" however, and upon trying it with the new installation, the camera was unresponsive in the game.  So, basically, everything that ran using the RealSense needed to be reinstalled in order to work again.  Just thought I'd mention that too.

My main reason for being here is to create a thread simply to discuss how the documentation is changing.  I'm of the opinion that you should have a clear, single landing page for all your documentation.  Not everyone is using R3 for various reasons.  JavaScript coders, for example, would be skeptical and uncertain that their code and plugins would even run in the latest update, being that the JS packages have been decoupled from the main installation package.  Another reason for not installing R3 might be running the risk of not uninstalling R2 or an earlier edition properly and screwing up the registry or something.  One primary reason I like working with Unity so much is that the helper tutorials and documentation are plentiful, accurate, and updated.

For anyone updating the Intel RSSDK online docs, it might be good practice to make it clear what's available and not available in the various releases but also have the entire set of documentation in a single place.  This whole "v1.1 has been overwritten" thing, meanwhile 2014gold is potentially missing data, is kind of confusing, but at least anyone who hits the v1.1 page will an have up-to-date reference guide.  Assuming that the R3 PDF document, currently linked alongside the latest download, is up-to-date and contains all the changes made to R3 -- perhaps it would be best just have the local PDF open for reference?  Has the "2014gold" page been overwritten with the exact same info as the v1.1 page?  

If people are still using R2 and visit the online docs page it should be clear that, for example, PXCFaceData >> EXPRESSION_TONGUE_OUT is exclusively an R3 addition.  The developer shouldn't have to try this from their IDE of choice and wonder why it isn't available in auto-complete, then check the source code in a Visual Studio solution.  It should be clear in the documentation.  Like, it could easily be stated what release this method was implemented in an additional column.  See the attached figure below:

[MartyG]

Yes, the thought had occurred to me too about the organization of the online documentation, and how often people are looking at outdated versions of docs.  

I'm guessing that Intel might use the same documentation engine for all their products, so that any drawbacks in the system apply to all their documented products.  When you use a standard centralized system for everything and have a huge amount of historical information then it's hard to migrate one product to a new system without migrating them all, otherwise company webmasters end up with difficulties due to having to learn and support different documentation platforms.

That being said, there are certainly things that you can do within the constraints of a particular system to make things clearer for users (such as some of the things you suggested, Lance.)