Comments on PERCEPS

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Jeremy Friesner jfriesne@ucsd.edu
The Wilson Group at UCSD
Fri Mar 14 11:52:31 CST 1997

Perceps is great! Its one of those rare programs that just works, without a lot of hassle. I'm using it to document a 300+ class C++ application, and it's reducing my documentation workload by a factor of five! Plus, the author is extremely helpful--I got answers to my email within hours, and my feature request was implemented and made available in one afternoon! :)

Mathias Weber mweber@atlas.de
STN Atlas Elektronik GmbH
Mon Mar 17 6:58:44 CST 1997

Hi, I have been delighted having found a tool like PERCEPS. But I immediately put it aside when I noticed that it gracefully ignores standard c-comment (/**/). A great amount of our code (C++-code!) uses standard c-comments for good reason (performance of other tools). PERCEPTS could have been my choice when I started with totally new software. But having zillions of existing classes I will not refer to it, as long as it forces me to touch every file to produce a documentation containing at least that amount of information that is already contained in my files. I think an option like "-dont_ignore_standard_c_comments" could overcome this problem. Mathias and there is no

Author's Note: The perfectly valid criticizm above has been addressed as of version 1.4.2 - Mark

Mathias Weber mweber@atlas.de
STN Atlas Elektronik GmbH
Tue Mar 18 1:31:13 CST 1997

First: I apologize for publishing a critisism that was meant to be addressed to the author. Second: a big thank to the author realizing my request in less than a day! I think the new features of version 1.4.2 (the treatment of c-style comments) will be of great help not only for me!

Ron Savage rpsavage@ozemail.com.au
SAVAGE SOFTWARE Pty Ltd
Thu Apr 3 2:27:50 CDT 1997

I have just downloaded Perceps. I haven't used it yet, but I have a good use for it on my current project. Cheers, Ron

Steve Chen steven.d.chen@boeing.com
Boeing Commercial Airplane Group
Fri Apr 4 13:32:44 CDT 1997

Perceps customizable report templates is a great idea. Instead of being stuck with a given report format, I was able to use it to generate reports that 1) list all classes alphabetically, 2) list classes and their parents, and 3) list classes and what children inherit them -- all this in addition to being able to format the basic class document. Very flexible! Plus, the customer support department (i.e. Mark) responds quickly to my suggestions/questions. Keep up the good work! Can't wait to see the next version.

Randy Jae rjw4@Lehigh.EDU
Lehigh University
Sun Apr 6 19:00:05 CDT 1997

Hey there all :-)

Noman Craig Emery B.Sc. Craig.Emery@ft.com
Financial Times Infomation
Thu Apr 17 5:53:15 CDT 1997

I've only just downloaded PERCEPS but I think it's could be very usefull. I'm looking forward to the time when my code comments actually become my documentation. This is a great idea. Keep up the good work.

Igor Markov imarkov@ucla.edu
UCLA, Mathematics
Mon Apr 21 17:15:02 CDT 1997

The guestbook scripts are broken -- I get "server error", I just lost two paragraphs of text I typed Anyways, I like PERCEPS and I would like to see it do more things. For example, work on .c and .cc files and display the function call tree with filenames. Navigating this tree would be cool. I realize that such a capability would raise PERCEPS to the level of a static analyser, ... why not? Keep up good work IGOR P.S. Perhaps http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/larch/lclint/ can be useful (tecnology-wise)

geetha geetha@network2.cs.usm.my
Network Research Group, Univ.Sci.Mal
Mon Apr 21 21:35:37 CDT 1997

I'm working on the NRG Univ.Sci.Malaysia's guestbook. This web site helps me with that. Thank you.

Kevin Dahlhausen ap096@po.cwru.edu
Thu May 1 10:44:07 CDT 1997

I love the examples, but I am having trouble getting it to generate the 'ClassName'.html files. Any ideas?


Author's Note: Kevin had encountered a problem with the initial verion 2.0.0 release that has been corrected as of version 2.1.1. Make sure you get the latest version.

Eric Jablow erjablow@cais.com
Logicon Ultrasystems, Inc.
Sun Jul 6 21:54:21 CDT 1997

I want to see if I can adapt this to Objective-C. If I can, I'll try to let you know. Eric

Mike Ormsby mto@xig.com
Xi Graphics
Wed Jul 30 16:18:45 CDT 1997

I just downloaded perceps and used it for the first time. This is incredibly cool. I've been looking for something like this for years. Thank you very much.

David C. Ekchian david@pfi.ibk.baum.ethz.ch
ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Thu Sep 4 4:10:48 CDT 1997

This is the perfect tool I was looking for. I use a similar tool (a Perl script called AutoDoc) for my Objective-C code but it is not so extensible (no Template). Many thanks to the author. When do you plan to release an RTF Template?

Bob Seals ROBERT.SEALS@ABNAMRO.COM
ABN - AMRO
Wed Sep 17 15:58:27 CDT 1997

THANK YOU

Malcolm Wilkins mfw@sv1.smb.man.ac.uk
University of Manchester
Thu Sep 25 10:27:25 CDT 1997

It's fantastic- that is going to save me so much time! Very impressive. If it worked with nested class declarations too, it really would be perfect!

Hans Sperber sph@rib.de
RIB Bausoftware GmbH
Tue Nov 11 11:31:29 CDT 1997

I can't make a comment, i've just got it...

william william@aol.com
Fri Nov 21 17:15:28 CDT 1997

Hi just testing

Bob McWhirter bob@watusi.com
Watusi Software
Sun Dec 7 1:25:05 CDT 1997

Darnit Mark. What's the big idea of adding features and improving your software so rapidly? You know, you're ruining your chances of ever working for Microsoft, if you keep up this kind of work. -Bob (upgrading again, just to check out the new toys!)

steve jaffe sjaffe@ml.com
merrill lynch
Wed Dec 10 15:15:47 CDT 1997

I've just downloaded it; perceps looks like an excellent tool. One thing that I miss (and this is lacking in many other similar documentation tools) is the ability to see the FULL interface of a class, including the inherited interface. To me, not seeing only the interface specific to each derived class is like looking at one piece of jigsaw puzzle at a time. I know that implementing the full class view would be some work; I'm hopeful that the fact that Perceps is completely written in Perl may make the job of keeping track of the ancestral members relatively straightforward. I will probably give it a try, if the author's well-know propensity for alacrity doesn't make the task moot. Thanks for a nice piece of work!

Bjarne G. Hald hald@stibo.dk
Stibo Datagrafik
Thu Dec 11 4:06:55 CDT 1997

I just downloaded Perceps and was really impressed! It seems to meet all our needs wrt. source code documentation. It is definitely much better than other similar tools I have examined.

terry Boult tboult@eecs.lehigh.edu
Lehigh University
Wed Dec 31 12:24:56 CDT 1997

nice stuff, will be using it in my project and probably in my Soft.Eng course

Stefan Gartz stefan.gartz@abc.se
Medidata
Wed Jan 7 2:36:44 CDT 1998

I like Perceps and will use it in my documentation efforts. I have one problem, I cant view the nested class!! I run it on Windows NT and it is not allowed with ":" in the filenames. What can I do to handle that?

Philipp Hanes phanes@icon.com
ICon CMT Corp.
Thu Jan 22 14:31:18 CDT 1998

Very nice tool, I hope it keeps growing and becoming even more versatile. Very useful already!

Shah Ali shanaaz.akbar@sheridanc.on.ca
Student
Mon Jan 26 8:41:26 CDT 1998

I have been using perceps at my work place to generate html files. I have created a new template which is like a class tree. This takes a class and extracts all classes that are parents and lists them (with links) to from a class tree. But the Program itself takes almost 18hrs to generate output files. Any advice on how this time can be reduced will really be appreciated. ThankYou. Shanaaz

Shah Ali shanaaz.akbar@sheridanc.on.ca
Student
Mon Jan 26 8:46:46 CDT 1998

I have been using perceps at my work place to generate html files. I have created a new template which is like a class tree. This takes a class and extracts all classes that are parents and lists them (with links) to the class template. But the Program itself takes a long time to generate output files. Any advice on how this time can be reduced will really be appreciated. Great Program!

Gergely Buday buday@lhsystems.hu
Lufthansa Systems Hungary
Wed Feb 11 5:57:16 CDT 1998

How difficult would it be to adjust PERCEPS to another OO language? - Gergely

Rich Schaaf rschaaf@computer.org
PingTel Corp.
Tue Mar 10 11:26:54 CDT 1998

It's a really nice piece of software and I'd love to use it. Unfortunately, my code uses namespaces and it seems that this throws off the parser. The namespace declaration makes the parser think that everything inside is within a block and the PROCINPUT subroutine appears to only check for comments when not inside a block. Sniff!! Any plans to support namespace declarations in a future release?

Mike Gibson mxgibs2@uswest.com
US West
Mon Mar 23 9:34:18 CDT 1998

Great Tool we are using to document our classes.

Gary Zhang gzhang@sensar.com
Sensar
Fri Mar 27 10:11:35 CDT 1998



Godinaud JeanMichel.Godinaud@europe.tgs.com
Tgs-europe
Thu Apr 2 3:34:36 CDT 1998

Great and very usefull product!

Garold L. Johnson dynalt@ix.netcom.com
DYNAMIC Alternatives
Fri Apr 3 9:16:50 CDT 1998

Great program! The best of the category I have seen. I am running on Windows NT (Stabdard perl 5.004.02) where ':' is not a legal file character. Changing $SRO to '--' doesn't fix it. Some links in the sample are generated with '::' in the link name, and Base::Nested is translated as Base only. I am going to try $SRO = '-' to see if the double character is the problem. It looks, though, as if the problem is deeper than that. A class name used as part of a file reference needs to have '::' translated, but a displayed class name shouldn't. This is not trivially determined when class names may be used in either context within a template. It may be necessary to add support for {class @} and {classname @} similar to {name @} to allow templates to specify context. I'll let you know as soon at I have more information.

Belladonna jezze@usa.net
Leisure Time Enterprises
Sun Apr 5 22:33:04 CDT 1998

nice script...! :)

Dave Whittington whitting@motispd.com
Motorola
Tue May 5 22:21:06 CDT 1998

PERCEPS looks like just what I need. I'll have to play with it for awhile to see just what it can do. Thanks for providing great software! Dave

Eric Hopper hopper@omnifarious.mn.org
Global Maintech
Thu May 7 23:15:06 CDT 1998

Perceps is a fantastic tool. It's what every good C++ shop needs. :-)

Robin Anderson robin@ibmoto.com
Motorola, Inc.
Thu May 28 13:15:24 CDT 1998

This is terrific. Thanks.

James A. Crotinger jcrotinger@ibm.net
Wildwood Consulting
Sun May 31 13:12:21 CDT 1998

I'm not a super perl hacker, but I'd like to figure out how to take embedded "section" comments in my class definitions and have them come out as section heading in the detailed document. That is, my class documentation style is something like: class foo { public: ////////////////// // Constructors ////////////////// // One constructor foo(int); // Another foo(const foo &); ////////////////// // Accessors ////////////////// // Get foo's value int getval(); ////////////////// // Mutators ////////////////// // Set foo's value void setval(); /* ... */ }; I'd have to embed some tag in the section headings, maybe something like: ///////////////////////////////////// //!Section: Constructors ///////////////////////////////////// This is a bit ugly, but I think I could live with it 8-). But I haven't the foggiest idea what to do to process this. Recommendations would be appreciated. (For now I've just turned these into /* */ comments, so they go away, but I like the structure and would like to recover this in the document.) Jim

fuzzie fuzzie@gmx.net
privat
Mon Jul 6 9:26:36 CDT 1998

hey,I like your work !!! It´s verry easy and simple to setup this script!

Andrew Rambaut andrew.rambaut@zoo.ox.ac.uk
University of Oxford
Tue Jul 21 10:42:51 CDT 1998

Fantastic

conor pppp@dummy.com
Wed Aug 12 17:50:53 CDT 1998

nice page

conor pppp@dummy.com
Wed Aug 12 17:52:24 CDT 1998

nice page

oner onerketen@altavisa.net
robosis
Wed Sep 2 5:14:25 CDT 1998

selamin aleyküm

Mm Mm@mm.com
Mm
Wed Sep 2 15:49:46 CDT 1998

thgjft

patrick nolan pnolan@coryphaeus.com
coryphaeus software
Fri Sep 4 18:04:51 CDT 1998

This looks great! Exactly what we were looking for. I will keep you updated to let you know how it works for docuemnting our code development. -p

S.Sannasi Nehru snehru@kpmg.com
KPMG Peatmarwick LLP
Fri Sep 18 13:51:49 CDT 1998

What I can say. It is fantastic and It's free. I really liked the way the presentation layer is abstracted.

Matt Payne payne@ACM.org
CSG Systems Inc
Tue Sep 22 10:23:28 CDT 1998

I'm hoping to use PRECEPS for both C and C++ Thanks for making it available! -Matt

Sung-Joon Hong sjhong@plaa1.snu.ac.kr
Seoul National University
Thu Sep 24 6:33:53 CDT 1998

I downloaded PERCEPS and have used it. It was very easy to use. The example files are also very good. PERCEPS are helpful for my work, because it is very difficult for me to make documents. I thank you for his release of good works.

Sung-Joon Hong sjhong@plaza1.snu.ac.kr
S.N.U.
Thu Sep 24 6:39:11 CDT 1998

I wrote wrong email address at my upper comments. I also hope that many skillful programmers would release new charming template files.

philippe moutarlier philippe@enit.fr
enit
Fri Oct 9 4:04:17 CDT 1998

I have just downloaded perceps and I just love the concepts ! Great job, thank you. I am trying to update the latex templates so we could have automatic cross references there too. It is almost working. What I think would be great is to have an sgml version of the templates so we could derive any format from there. I will try to do this. However, I have a pb that could be a bug : say I declare a structure : typedef struct Mystruct { ...}; and then I define one locally inside a global C-style function : Myfunc () { struct Mystruct *truc; } then perceps complains it is finding a duplicate declaration of Mystruct. Somehow, it looks like it is parsing the function as if it was a class .

Winston Wolff winston@scilearn.com
Scientific Learning
Mon Oct 12 13:00:43 CDT 1998

I just got Preceps running and I love it so far. I'm really glad you've added old /**/ comments but it seems that using these comments don't let you do stuff like taggin parameters (!param:) and making a detailed comment different from a brief comment means you have to have two comment blocks for each function.

Peter Martin peterm@zeta.org.au
The Scribe & Chutney Trust
Thu Oct 22 17:26:57 CDT 1998

What a great-looking tool ! Someone had to do it, but I didn't expect anyone would do it so nicely. Thanks and congratulations. Came here via Ron Savage's perl page...

K.B. wolffancy@aol.com
Magick
Wed Nov 11 12:18:07 CDT 1998

Well done :)

sam t dalton samtdalton@yahoo.com
deaconnerds
Sun Nov 29 15:07:37 CDT 1998

how do I get this darn good brogram

Thomas Jordan ace@programmer.net
Camtronics Medical Systems, Ltd
Fri Dec 4 21:31:49 CDT 1998

Looks cool. Can't wait to try it. I'm going to try it on the ACE library this weekend. Thanks, -- Tom. PS> I learned about this from a post on comp.lang.perl.announce from Ron Savage

Farid Ferkdadji f-ferkdadji@aix.matra-datavision.fr
Matra Datavision
Wed Dec 9 2:47:08 CDT 1998

It looks very interesting ! More comment after the trial...

bubba bubbab@hotmail.com
Wed Dec 9 17:46:46 CDT 1998

test

Adrian Thomson athompson@armature.com
ARMATURE Ltd.
Tue Dec 15 3:55:27 CDT 1998

Very impressed. Have spent 20mins this morning trying it with one of our headers and works very well. One problem I have found is with overloaded methods and multiple constructors - with the "example1" and "example2" templates the tool does not appear to distinguish between methods which take the same number of parameters but which are of different types i.e. a_method(int) a_method(char*) Is this a problem with the template or tool? Regards, Adrian.

jesse reichler reichler@cs.uiuc.edu
university of illinois at urbana-champaign
Tue Dec 29 10:27:48 CDT 1998

love the merge option!

Sebastiaan van Doorn Sebastiaan.vanDoorn@kst.siemens.de
Siemens ElectroCom GmbH
Tue Jan 5 8:04:22 CDT 1999

Dear developers of PERCEPS ! your tool really seems very helpful. I tried out DOC++ too, but it crashed on some of my header files. Yours didn't. My browsers (Netscape 4.04,Internet Explorer 4.0) have a problem loading the nested class documentation though. Do you have any options for handling the standard JavaDoc - tags such as @see, @author, @deprecated etc ? Thank you very much !

Scott Powers spowers@geomagic.com
Raindrop Geomagic, Inc
Mon Jan 11 14:13:31 CDT 1999

This really looks like the best autodoc package I have yet to see...and I've looked through _a lot_. I'll be getting back in touch with you, assuming everything works out...well I'll probably get back to you either way. Thanks, Scott

Amit Ghosh ghosh@gmx.de
Tue Jan 12 17:00:53 CDT 1999

Just downloaded the tool and looks VERY promising :-). After playing around with the templates it seems, as if there are still some minor bugs (O.k. may be my mistake, because I'm definitly not a PERL Guru). 1. Inner types aren't reported in {foreach typedef}...{next} 2. {if name /rxp/} crashes (endless loop) if /rxp/ contains anchors like in /^abc/. But anyway, thanks for this great piece of code!

Amir whz_up@hotmail.com
Commer AB
Mon Jan 18 3:55:12 CDT 1999

It´s really nice that you share your CGI script for free!

Stefan Guenther guenther@his.de
HIS GmbH
Mon Feb 1 8:15:12 CDT 1999

Very nice program. Although in the first source code I tried the program there seems to be one of those "bizarre syntax" - elements mentioned at the end of the doku. :-)

Jerome Margat jerome.margat@cadoe.com
CADOE
Wed Feb 3 9:51:48 CDT 1999

GREAT !!!

george kielty gkielty@iaehv.nl
self
Tue Feb 9 16:42:09 CDT 1999

Hi mark, I've just down loaded perceps for my onw use. regards George Kielty

t t@0.com
t
Sun Feb 21 16:03:13 CDT 1999

HI

Antonio-M. Corbi Bellot acorbi@dlsi.ua.es
Universidad de Alicante
Mon Feb 22 9:36:05 CDT 1999

With perceps you can make your documentation look like you want, and -very important- not only in HTML, you can produce any output format you *understand* (LaTeX, man, etc...).

alex alex@hotmail.com
at home
Tue Feb 23 23:41:27 CDT 1999

cool scri9pt

Massimo Cesaro ces@necsy.it
Necsy s.p.a.
Wed Feb 24 11:50:58 CDT 1999

Really Cool!

Allen Gooch alleng@kesmai.com
Kesmai Corporation
Mon Mar 1 18:44:11 CDT 1999

Nice tool. Have you any plans for adding namespace support? Other than that, the tool works like a charm. Thanks.

René tech@francomedia.qc.ca
Lab
Wed Mar 3 13:55:30 CDT 1999



Boman Kalle@hotmail.com
Kalle
Mon Mar 8 17:43:31 CDT 1999

Just checking out

Tony Kirke tony_kirke@ieee.org
Sat Mar 27 0:59:49 CDT 1999

Perceps is the tool that I've been looking for (after frustration with Doc++ etc). I'm using it for DSP Classes (see http://spuc.webjump.com)

Big Brother bb@hc.com
Holding Company
Tue Apr 13 0:48:37 CDT 1999

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Fred Fluharty fred.fluharty@ps.net
Perot Systems
Thu Apr 15 13:24:01 CDT 1999

This is a very nice utility. I especially like the flexibility and the lack of a requirement for lots of crazy-formatted comments. I think a very nice feature to this website would be a forum for users to share templates they've created. Right now, I have the few which came with the product, but I'd love to see more before trying to create my own.

sddfs cathy@hotmail.com
dffhd
Fri Apr 16 1:34:41 CDT 1999

sdgdsfg

Duaine Pryor dwp@ikos.com
IKOS Systems
Tue Apr 20 14:28:20 CDT 1999

I've been using perceps for a while now and its great! Recently, however, I encountered a problem. It does not seem to properly parse bit fields in structures, for example, struct hithere { unsigned int bit1 : 1 ; }; Is this a bug?

Geoff Fortytwo geoff.d.fortytwo@intel.com
Intel
Wed Apr 21 14:28:48 CDT 1999

PERCEPS looks like an excellent documentation system! However, it has the drawback that it attempts to create a lot of files with :: in the filenames. The colon is not a legal character in Windows filesystems, so until I figure out how to write a PERL filter that changes the filenames, I won't be able to use PERCEPS. (I'm currently using it on a Linux system, but the web server I need to put the pages on is a WinNT system.)

Tom Bryan tbryan@arlut.utexas.edu
Applied Research Laboratories
Sat Apr 24 0:12:03 CDT 1999

Calling Mark Peskin! All appearances seem to indicate that Mark Peskin graduated in May 1998 and has not been maintaining PERCEPS since then. I've been reading throught the PERCEPS code, and I have a few questions about it. If anyone has been in contact with Mark Peskin, please send me his e-mail address. If Mark cannot be found, I will probably take over the PERCEPS code (at least temporarily). I will post a new web address here if I decide to take over the code. If I do take over the code, I'd be interested in everyone's suggestions and patches. Thanks. ---Tom

Jeff Smith Jeffman2001@yahoo.com
N/A
Thu Apr 29 19:35:04 CDT 1999

Just testing...Looking Good

kirsten patricia kirsten@gncss.com
GNCSS (great northwest coed softball series)
Sun May 2 18:52:52 CDT 1999

Always A Hit ! !

me nasdfka@flahsn.nte
here
Fri May 21 15:52:54 CDT 1999

sdgsdf

aswinpandirajan aswinpandirajan@hotmail.com
aswin
Mon May 24 3:09:38 CDT 1999

ITS VERY FINE SUPPORT

Nathan Sidwell nathan@acm.org
Bristol University
Fri May 28 10:03:49 CDT 1999

I've just started to play with perceps -- looks good. It doesn't appear to understand/track namespaces, that would be nice :-)

rene de paula jr rene@usina.com
wunderman
Wed Jun 2 7:24:41 CDT 1999

How do you log the entries?

thien thien@concept.software.de
concept-software gmbh
Wed Jun 2 9:49:49 CDT 1999

I would like to get the the mailing list. but I can't enter my e-mail adress thien@concept-software.de your address-checker discards this. I suppose this is because of the hyphen in our address ?

Emile Salden emile@denforts.nl
Denforts
Sun Jun 6 7:51:18 CDT 1999

Great script I muss say. Hope I get it workin' Emile

Stefan Seefeld seefelds@magellan.umontreal.ca
Thu Jun 10 14:42:40 CDT 1999

hey, it looks like a really good tool ! Yet I'd like to ask for some adds: From what I've seen so far it should be relatively easy to add support for IDL files. Also, what about namespaces in C++ ? With your template mechanism it should be possible to make the program output sgml as required for linux docbook. That would be very valuable. Thanks a lot ! Stefan

Stefan Seefeld seefelds@magellan.umontreal.ca
Thu Jun 10 14:46:00 CDT 1999

hey, it looks like a really good tool ! Yet I'd like to ask for some adds: From what I've seen so far it should be relatively easy to add support for IDL files. Also, what about namespaces in C++ ? With your template mechanism it should be possible to make the program output sgml as required for linux docbook. That would be very valuable. Thanks a lot ! Stefan

Fabian fabian@clerk.com
ASN
Thu Jun 10 15:25:49 CDT 1999

great guestbook!

David Schneider das@telesynthesis.com
TeleSynthesis
Thu Jun 17 17:16:23 CDT 1999

Very nice job, this is the best tool for generating code documentation I have found. Suggestion: It would be useful to be able to give perceps a file containg a list of source files to be processed.