[erlang-questions] Strings - deprecated functions

[lloyd@REDACTED]

Hi Tristan,
 
When I have a few moments of free time, I'll go through the string docs carefully and try to point out all the issues that I find confusing or obscure.
 
Maybe I'm the only person in the world with issues here. If so, I'll shut up and try to get with the program. But I can't tell you how much time I've wasted trying to grasp how and when to use various functions in the docs--- and certainly not only the string documentation.
 
I've been trying for more than three years now to master Erlang sufficiently well to build my current project. The canonical books have made it possible (thanks, Joe, et. al.) But I'm an army of one. I can't turn to the programmer next me or my programming supervisor to ask what's what.
 
This list is a god-send and the folks on it are extraordinarily gracious and generous.  But for all that, there are still major libraries and functions that I've looked at thinking, hey, that might be useful. But I can't figure out for the life me how and when to use them even though they might be quite useful.
 
If we see reason to leave these obscure functions in, why can't we leave the Latin-1 functions? Even if only in name as a wrapper around the Unicode functions that deliver the same functionality?
 
When I launch my current project, I'll be happy to dig in deep and do what I can to help improve the docs. The best that I can offer is my profound ignorance and willingness to ask Micky the Dunce questions. 
 
One Erlanger pointed out that they would rather have maintainers work on bug fixes and new features than documentation. I'd argue that without clear and inviting documentation we discourage adopters and the cripple the vitality of our community.
 
I'm eager to do what I can do improve the documentation. But I can't spend much time at it until I get paid. And I don't get paid until I've launched my current project.
 
All the best,
 
Lloyd
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "Tristan Sloughter" <t@REDACTED>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 5:22pm
To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] Strings - deprecated functions



Can someone please write a short tutorial that shows on a one-to-one basis how to use Unicode functions to replace the Latin-1 functions then provide a link to it from the string docs. Or, better yet, simply integrate it into the string docs.
In your first email you already mentioned the fact that the docs do provide a one-to-one mapping, it links directly to the new function to use from the doc of the deprecated function. Like in your case of tokens to lexemes the same arguments work and the functions have examples, so what is missing from the docs?
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