[Laszlo-dev] Documenting javascript in OL docs

[John Sundman]

I was looking at a nifty little program prosted by user "Pathogen" on  
the forums:

http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/ 
showthread.php?s=&threadid=6704

In particular, I was noticing this line:

    var buttonNumber = buttonText.substr(6)

I was trying to remember how substr() counted.   So, I consulted the  
LZX reference. But that was no help, since substr() is not an LZX  
method but a plain-old javascript method and is thus not covered in our  
documentation.  I couldn't remember whether at <text> object was a pure  
javascript string or what, so I quickly read the Developer's Guide, and  
nowhere did I see any discussion of how a <text> object in LZX does or  
does not correspond to a string object in javascript.

This reminded me of the age-old question of how much we need to say  
about javascript itself in the OpenLaszlo docs.

This subject comes up from time to time when people  expect to find  
certain javascript libraries (regexp being the most common) and  
discover they're not there, or conversely, as in my case, forget  
entirely that there sometimes there are javascript methods that work on  
OL objects but which are not in the OL docs.

Anybody care to comment on the best way to handle this general problem  
(from a documentation point of view, that is).

Thanks,

jrs

P.S.:  What is the relationship between our text objects and javascript  
string objects?
P.P.S:  By the way, here is the "cute" program I was referring to ( I  
modified it slightly by changing his "button" to "ourbutton" to prevent  
confusion with the built-in button).



<canvas debug="true">

     <class name="myButton" extends="button">
         <handler name="onclick">
             var buttonText = this.getAttribute('text');
             var buttonNumber = buttonText.substr(6);
             Debug.write('Button ' + buttonNumber + ' has been  
clicked!');
         </handler>
     </class>

     <hbox name="buttonPanel" x="20" y="40" spacing="4"/>

     <method name="createButtons" event="oninit">
         <![CDATA[
         for(var i = 0; i < 10; i++){
             var ourbutton = new myButton(canvas.buttonPanel);
             ourbutton.setAttribute('text', 'Button #' + i);
         }
          ]]>
     </method>

</canvas>