laser_filters/Reviews/2009-9-29_Doc_Review

Reviewer:

Instructions for doing a doc review

See DocReviewProcess for more instructions

1. Does the documentation define the Users of your Package, i.e. for the expected usages of your Stack, which APIs will users engage with?
   • From the doc I understand that the user can (i) use the filter api to run individual/multiple laser filters, or (ii) use the provided nodes to run laser filters.
2. Are all of these APIs documented?
   • For the filter api this package refers to the filter package
   • The ros api of the two filter nodes is explained, although some information is missing. See below for comments.
3. Do relevant usages have associated tutorials? (you can ignore this if a Stack-level tutorial covers the relevant usage), and are the indexed in the right places?
   • Yes
4. If there are hardware dependencies of the Package, are these documented?
5. Is it clear to an outside user what the roadmap is for the Package?
   • It is mentioned that there will be pointcloud filters in the future.
6. Is it clear to an outside user what the stability is for the Package?
   • No
7. Are concepts introduced by the Package well illustrated?
   • Yes
8. Is the research related to the Package referenced properly? i.e. can users easily get to relevant papers?
9. Are any mathematical formulas in the Package not covered by papers properly documented?

For each launch file in a Package

1. Is it clear how to run that launch file?
2. Does the launch file start up with no errors when run correctly?
3. Do the Nodes in that launch file correctly use ROS_ERROR/ROS_WARN/ROS_INFO logging levels?

Concerns / issues

Wim

• Roadmap is limited to adding pointcloud filters. Stability of package is not mentioned.
• It is not clear what to do with the provided example configuration for the filters. Can these directly be copy-pasted into an xml/yaml file?
• The example launch file for generic_laser_filter_node does not give an example of the "~filter_chain" parameter; instead it loads a file my_laser_config.yaml that is not provided in the example. Same comment for the scan_to_cloud_filter_chain.
• When reading main page and the tutorials, it is confusing that there is
  • a set of individual filters listed (Median, intensity, ...),
  • a set of nodes to run filters, and
  • a set of filter examples using the filter node (scan shadows filter and robot self filter).

As a first time user, it took me a while to figure out what the different options are to run the laser filters. Could this be made more clear by e.g. having the main page only mention the individual laser filters, and a separate page mention the different ways to run filters?

Josh

Wim got most of mine, but here are some more:

• TODO: INCLUDE IMAGE OF VEILING needs an image.

ok, one more.

Conclusion

• The stability not being mentioned is ok. This is implicitly taken care of by our release status.
• Fixed node examples to include appropriate laser_config.yaml's
• To address page organization, added a "Using Laser Filters" section, and then moved the Laser Filter Plugins to the end. I think this makes it more obvious what to do with the example config files, etc.
• Removed Image Veiling todo comment. Would have been nice, but I don't see this as crucial to the documentation. We'll get stuff like this with more documentation polish pre-1.0.