Re: Major change in C++ doc strings

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 10:38:41 -0400, John W. Eaton wrote:
>   For dynamically loaded functions in .oct files (defined using the
> DEFUN_DLD macro) that are defined outside of core Octave, doc strings are
> written as C-style quoted strings.  They are stored in the .oct file as
> program text and loaded into memory when the .oct file is loaded.

A few questions on behalf of users and maintainers of external oct
files:

 • Can external code also start using comments for doc strings?
 • Does this new technique require Octave 4.2?
 • Are there scripts or Octave functions that packages can use to
   extract doc strings in a similar manner to Octave?

IOW, can I start using this new cleaner syntax for my package, will it
be backwards compatible, will doc_cache_create still work, and can I
call some script to extract doc strings and put them in a Texinfo manual
just like Octave does?

>   For C++ functions in core Octave (defined using any of the the DEFUN or
> DEFUN_DLD macros) doc strings are written in comments as plain text.  The
> Octave build system extracts these strings from the program source files and
> stores them in a single file (libinterp/DOCSTRINGS in the build tree).
> Octave's help function reads individual doc strings from this file as
> needed.  They are not stored in memory unless they are used.  The help
> function has worked like this for some time now.  My change was more about
> making it easier to edit the help strings.

They are also built into liboctinterp, right? Because I can run with
--doc-cache-file=/dev/null and still get help strings for builtins.

Thanks,

-- 
mike