Today I am very happy to announce that we have a first draft available of the new main Doctrine documentation which is titled, "Doctrine ORM for PHP". The content of this documentation was re-organized and completely re-written from the "Old Manual". The order of the chapters and sections have been re-thought and we've tried to put them in a more logical order. Now you can follow along in the chapters with code exercises and actually play with Doctrine as you read!

Main Highlights

• Almost 100% re-written.
• Chapters renamed and reorganized.
• Chapters split a part in to multiple to ease reading and flow.
• Added sample Doctrine implementation for executing exercise code as you read.
• Lots of aesthetic improvements: SQL highlighting, YAML highlighting and better PHP highlighting colors.

We also added a few new markups that get rendered as boxes that standout with a representative icon. The three different boxes are: note, tip and caution.

To Do

With this announcement we have a few more things left to do and we need your help!

Perform Week of Revisions

First we need to spend about a week or so proof-reading the the new documentation. This is where the community can really be helpful. Go ahead and create a trac account if you don't already have one. This way when you're reading and you spot a problem or have an idea how something could be better you can create a ticket easily.

The goal here is to get the 1.0 version tightened up and polished with a nice shine! Then we can branch the new documentation for 1.1.

Provide Exercise Code for Download

At the end of each chapter we will provide a tagged copy of the state of the exercise code so you can check your work against ours or if you get behind you can get caught back up by downloading the code.

Release Doctrine 1.1

We have a few more bugs to fix in the 1.1 version then we will release the second stable version of Doctrine, 1.1. Right before we release Doctrine 1.1(which will hopefully also be in a week or so), we will branch the new documentation for 1.1 and make all the necessary updates based on what's changed. Then we will release and open it to your suggestions.

Printed Book: "Doctrine ORM for PHP"

Once the new documentation has a bit of time to gather some user feedback and typos weeded out we will offer the documentation in a physical printed format through lulu. Don't worry we will still offer all the documentation for free on the website. Even if you've already read the documentation on the web you can show your appreciation for the project and support it by purchasing a copy.

If you want to print a rich text version of the Book yourself instead of using the PDF or ordering a copy, we have implemented a print stylesheet so when you access the documentation here you will get the version styled for printing.

Now go ahead and check out Doctrine ORM for PHP - Guide to Doctrine for PHP and bring me some feedback. :)