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.