Re: [ros-dev] Undocumented APIs

[Robert Shearman]

James Tabor wrote:

>   Hi!
>  Magnus Olsen wrote:
>
> >   Then accoring  "2. There exists a third
> > party driver/application 
> >  using the
> >  behavior" then we can  remove whole pnp, directx, win32k, rpc, 
> >  network, usb
> >  and more. alot of api is undoc or is wrong. WHat we have left no reactos
> >  and I agesnt it. alot of manufactor using undoc api in lowlevel and u 
> >  need
> >  implement it right.  and I do not like we have vote on it. let us 
> >  work on
> >  how to implement stuff as we have always done.
> >  
>  Wine is starting to fall into this trap too. If this policy goes into 
>  place
>  we will have to write up documents for these unknown apis and explain 
>  what
>  they do. Eventually we will publish M$ api for them w/o M$ giving it 
>  to the EU. 

Why is this a bad thing? So, Wine has documentation for many functions 
(which is in some cases more comprehensive than MSDN). If a Wine 
developer comes along and uses the documentation and she now produces 
better code because she has better documentation to work from. If a 
Win32 developer comes along and uses the documentation then Wine gets 
free publicity.

The same argument applies for ReactOS.

-- 
Rob Shearman