Deprecated - Documentation

Heya, I'm currently trying to figure out how to make a custom payment module to process purchase orders (basically someone has the shipping details up, presses 'Continue to payment details' and then you have a page that shows purchase order information)

I've been digging through the source code for authorize_net, cod, and paypal payment modules, but I cannot seem to find *ANY* specific documentation that shows the flow of these modules.

If anyone has advice or tips, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

Can anyone recommend tools for generating documentation? In particular, I wish to optimize documentation of my Drupal modules, but I would think a good tool would work for more general purposes.

I am looking for something quick and easy to use, so that if something occurs to me I can just dump it into my documentation.

Ideally the tool could publish PDFs, Flash or other movies w/ voice-over, showing my desktop & mouse clicks, etc.

Thanks!

I was just reading the "Handbook update -reorganization progress" news
http://drupal.org/node/44233

Where I discovered that a page listing contributed modules exists here:
http://drupal.org/handbook/config/contribmodules

I think I'm reasonably thorough when I search for information on this website, and yet this was one of those too familiar, "how did I miss that page" moments I frequently have trying to find information on Drupal.

It seems the most direct route from the Contents of the handbook to "Contribute Modules" page is:

Handbooks -> Installation and configuration (section) -> Drupal modules and features -> Then read the second paragraph on this page to find the link to -> contributed modules page

-OR-

Handbooks -> Installation and configuration (section) -> Drupal modules and features -> Then scroll to the bottom of the list of modules to find a link to -> contributed modules page

I think the "Contributed modules" page is top level stuff that would be more useful on the Table of Contents under the Installation and configuation section. When I had just begun reading about Drupal, it would have more quickly helped me to understand the distinction between core and contributed modules to see the two categories listed sequentially in the table of contents. As a newer user to Drupal I think the following would have been the most helpful way for me to originally find information about modules.

I just discovered that there are many (60, 100?) interesting modules in the cvs repository that are not listed anywhere else, as far as I know. For example, there is a

friendlist module (2004)
and an epublish module

http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/modules/

this link lists ecommerce modules, as well as you can help write documentation for it!
http://civicspacelabs.org/home/node/15370

here is the link for how to write documentation for modules
http://drupal.org/node/24268

thanks to amazon for pointing this out.

ae

if you volunteer for a module, just make a comment here. I started doing paypal subscriptions and I'll see if I can understand it enough to write something up.

Here is an example of what I think I would a useful addition to the documentation. Many many thanks to sepeck who has taken on the immense job of overseeing and reorganizing the documentation.

http://drupal.org/node/44233

Some threads about where users can create unofficial documentation
http://drupal.org/node/44143#comment-82413
http://drupal.org/node/43452

Every time I have a question I spend hours reading the forums and pulling out the best answers. (The answers often conflict.) I'm sure others do too. It seems to me it'd be useful to add our summaries to the documentation. Particularly for the contributed modules. Is it possible to create a space on the created modules where people can leave comments that would be unofficial documentation? Otherwise, every time I research a module I read the forums, the bug reports, and every user has to do this again.

how to create paid membership using Drupal
summary written Jan. 11, 2006

The 2 main modules mentioned are:

ecommerce module
http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce

paypal subscriptions module
http://drupal.org/project/paypal_subscription
March 2005

Here is a list of key threads I pulled out, listed in the order of the search results (out of about 30 I read)

22996 module author did not reply. may not be supported
43609 can't edit or delete subscription
14434 Dries favors having a good paypal module