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Preliminary Managed DirectX Documentation?

  • Article

If you've downloaded the latest DirectX9 SDK, you may have noticed that all of the Managed docs are tagged with the “This documentation is preliminary and subject to change.“ line. Here's the scoop from Mark, one of the Programming Writers:

The Summer 2004 SDK Update provides complete, release-quality reference documentation for the following Managed DirectX namespaces:

  • Microsoft.DirectX.AudioVideoPlayback
  • Microsoft.DirectX.Diagnostics
  • Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D
  • Microsoft.DirectX.DirectSound
  • Microsoft.DirectX.PrivateImplementationDetails
  • Microsoft.DirectX

Developers can use documentation for the above namespaces in confidence, despite the “preliminary” disclaimer on the pages. The conceptual material provided in the “Introducing DirectX 9.0” section is also accurate, although the section is not considered complete.

However, documentation for the remaining namespaces does not meet Microsoft’s release quality standards:

  • Microsoft.DirectX.DirectDraw (deprecated)
  • Microsoft.DirectX.DirectInput
  • Microsoft.DirectX.DirectPlay (deprecated)
  • Microsoft.DirectX.Security

Unfortunately the documentation build system did not allow the “preliminary” disclaimer to be displayed selectively on only some pages, so the decision was made to keep the disclaimer on all the pages.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2004
    I would like to agree, but I can't. There are no samples whatsoever for the method calls. And the reasoning for the bizarre format of the help file eludes me. Why can't it act like the rest of the MSDN library documentation?
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2004
    I am a newbie at DirectX.
    If Directplay is depreciated, what doI use in its place?
  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2004
    Bujitsu and I are in the same boat. Imagine my suprise when after thinking throuh a conceptual design and convincing my boss that we should use directx , I find directplay is deprecated with no hint of what we are to use instead.