Forget about having a manual for the benefit of users of the system, how
about for the implementors! My view is that especially when code is to be
used by other people (gosh I guess that would be _all the time_) the
first thing one should do is write [the,a] manual. After all if you
can't explain what to do how on earth are you going to write it so it
does it? It can be very humbling to discover that a large part of what
one had thought is important, or has already written for a prototype, is
completely irrelevant.

tim
-- 
+================================================================+
|Though a nation watched her falling, yet a world could only cry |
|As they passed from us to Glory , riding fire in the sky.       |
|(Jordin Kare, Fire In The Sky)                                  |
|Farewell Columbia.                                              |
+================================================================+
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim