Why no API docs?

I'm preparing the latest release of Glazed Lists, and as with every release I'm going to post the Javadocs online. Posting the Javadocs on the public Internet is pretty easy and it provides some nice benefits:

The project becomes Googleable. http://google.com/search?q=BasicEventList

I can permalink to Javadocs from mailing lists, forums and blogs

Potential users can get a feeling for the project's scope and implementation

Existing users can easily browse the API without a download

Unfortunately, not very many projects bother with public Javadocs. I failed to find docs for KTable and JGoodies Forms.

No Javadocs is a problem for me since when I'm building the Glazed Lists Javadocs I like to use the link feature, which allows you to seamlessly browse documentation across projects. For example, on our BasicEventList doc page, you can navigate directly to Sun's Collection interface by clicking on the appropriate link.

I hoped that the Javalobby would come to the rescue with their JDocs.com service. The site hosts Javadocs for many open source projects, but unfortunately, they screwed up their version of the package-list file, which breaks compatibility with the -link switch. I notified them of the problem over a month ago but I haven't heard anything back.

The net result is that Glazed Lists 1.6.0 won't have Javadocs linked for some packages. Too bad!

# posted by Jesse Wilson on Tuesday, May 23, 2006