Updating Documentation

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi everyone!

You may have noticed (or not) that I’m trying to update documentation after Corona SDK went full open source with MIT license and rebranded as Solar2D. Hopefully, this will save you some time and make things easier for new developers getting into Solar2D.

This topic serves both as an announcement to what I’ve done so far and a call to action. If you see a document that is wrong or outdated, please go ahead and fix it through documentation repo. If you can’t, report it as an issue or let others know through the forums or Discord.

The list below consists of the pages I saw and listed so far. Obviously, there are more pages that needs updating so we need more hands on this.

Disclaimer
Before we start, I just want to mention that these are all related to documentation and you can check all the changes made so far from here and here.

What I’ve done so far:

  • Changed branding to Solar2D using both constants and manually editing each one.
  • Updated download links and current release number. Documents are no longer linking to 2018 builds!
  • Added constants to build.lua for Free Plugins Directory and Playground. Started using the link to plugins but haven’t found a good way to reference Playground yet.
  • Updated Installing Windows and Installing macOS. Added links to new text editor packages and updated old ones.
  • Updated Getting Started, removing broken links and updating existing ones.
  • Updated Getting Started - Chapter 1.
  • Updated Introduction to Solar2D. Added links to the Free Plugins Directory along with third-party marketplaces such as Solar2D Marketplace and Solar2D Plugins. Also, updated social media and forum links. Added reference to the Discord channel.
  • Updated Timer. Detailed gotchas.
  • Added links to pure Lua libraries such as composer.*, easing.*, timer.*, transition.*, widget.*.
  • Updated Plugins to link Free Plugins Directory and third-party marketplaces such as Solar2D Marketplace and Solar2D Plugins. Also, added link to Apple IAP plugin which was missing.
  • Updated Admob. Removed premium reference and added identifier to save you some time!
  • Updated OpenSSL. Removed premium reference and updated links.

What needs to be done:

  • Remove references to premium subscriptions since they are no longer applicable.
  • Splash Screen Control usage instructions should be moved to Building / Distribution pages since it’s no longer a plugin. After doing that, removing it from plugins list is also a good idea.
  • Update Animation with build.settings and a reference to source code like other pure Lua libraries.
  • Update Getting Started chapters through 2 to 8.
  • Add reference to Apple IAP plugin as well as the store.* API, making the Apple IAP plugin more visible.
15 Likes
#2

@bgmadclown Thanks so much so doing this! Solar2D really does have great documentation and your attention to little details like “timer gotchas” as you update the docs is really appreciated.

1 Like
#3

Thank you @sporkfin :slight_smile:

About the “timer gotchas”, it’s actually @Il.Sui who wanted to include that detail about suspend / resume cases. I only added a little detail to it.

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#4

@bgmadclown Great work, thank you for taking time to work on this! Keeping the documentation updated is incredibly important.

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#5

Thank you @Markus_Ranner . I think the same. Back when I first started learning Corona SDK, documentation was extremely useful and I learned a great deal. Hopefully, newcomers will think the same with Solar2D :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#6

Huge thank you for doing this, and to anyone updating this documentation. Making sure the Getting Started guide is up to date is such an important part of the rebrand and so glad it got done.

1 Like
#7

Thanks you @bgmadclown for this… being a newbie this is a blessing to not go through broken links and the branding name changes.
One thing which would be great as I learned the hard way, is that there no reference link for Corona cards in any of documentation pages, I had to Google search it to get to this link https://docs.coronalabs.com/coronacards/index.html
Would be super helpful if this can be surfaced somewhere from the docs.
Apologies if there is some historical reason for it to be not present currently.

#8

@kbradford haven’t really dug deep regarding the guides but doing my best to keep them up-to-date. Hopefully, they are still working examples as they were back in the day. Considering the approach Corona SDK engineering had previously, I believe the examples are still working :slight_smile:

@duskandawn glad to be of help. After seeing your questions, I also thought about this. I don’t know if it’s by choice but if @vlads could shine a light on this, it’s definitely a good idea to put a link to CoronaCards from the main documentation page. I can’t do the graphics like the other titles but there may be something we can work out :slight_smile:

1 Like
#9

@ bgmadclown . Thanks. I will help update the docs too (i am still new to pull-push request things…)

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