Where to find the Documentation for formerly builtin and new Packages?

[Thygrrr]

I have problems finding and bookmarking the authoritative documentation and scripting references for packages, for Unity Tech Stream and LTS versions since 2021 and later (but seems to affect Unity 2019 and later).

For example, for UnityEngine.UI, there is no recent documentation I can find - the last is for Unity 2018 here:

Unity - Scripting API: AspectRatioFitter

Alas, when clicking on the (formerly quite helpful!)
,
that brings me to the most recent scripting reference, but that no longer contains any documentation for the UnityEngine.UI package.

This problem is compounded for some of the more modern packages, such as Unity.mathematics; where only obscure or very old versions can be found. For instance:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.mathematics@0.0/api/Unity.Mathematics.Random.html
os for Version “0.0” of Unity.mathematics.

brings us to a completely different page, that is actually not even a scripting reference, just a basic usage overview.

Curiously / comically, docs.unity.cn has the newer scripting reference:
Struct Random | Mathematics | 1.2.6
structure, but of course is painfully slow to browse because China is on the other side of the world for many of us.

The expected equivalent on docs.unity.com
https://docs.unity.com/Packages/com.unity.mathematics@1.2/api/Unity.Mathematics.Random
returns a 404.

Google sure doesn’t seem to have it indexed, either, only the Chinese versions. With some digging, you can find the right page here, but, and this is pretty bad, the full text search field in the top right for the documentation doesn’t seem to have indexed its contents, only the class names and only when you get the precise prefix right, and finding functions by name is impossible (either finds nothing, or highly unspecific, poorly formatted results).

(if it is a Google Site Search, this may be related - but the loss of usability is massive)

[CodeSmile]

Hint:

Also:

Unity UI is here: Unity UI: Unity User Interface | Unity UI | 1.0.0
It is being replaced by UI Toolkit (formerly: UI Elements): Unity - Manual: UI Toolkit

[Thygrrr]

Thanks - so this backwater page never seen by the likes of Google is the official place :o
(I added a screenshot about what’s wrong with it to my original post.)

So why isn’t this in the normal Google Index? And why isn’t it full text indexed?
(and why is the .cn version both of these things?)

[CodeSmile]

I have no idea. Could be because one version is more popular than another, or has more “relevant keyword density” or something so Google ends up ranking it higher, more so the more users click on that link. That system sometimes turns against itself when there’s frequently updated docs that use a different URL. I bet from a Google point of view it would be best to have the latest version of a document always reachable by the same URL, and archiving older versions with versioned URLs.

I ran into this myself, looking at outdated docs. Make sure to follow the links in Package Manager instead.

[Murgilod]

Cool how Unity has gone from “woefully incomplete documentation” to “woefully incomplete documentation scattered across multiple sources that aren’t easy to find.”

[CodeSmile]

[neginfinity]

@Murgilod

Cool how Unity has gone from “woefully incomplete documentation” to “woefully incomplete documentation scattered across multiple sources that aren’t easy to find.”

Its original state was “very well done documentation”, for the record.

On other hand built-in documentation search never really worked and you had to google, and “see most recent version” haven’t ever worked either.

[Murgilod]

@neginfinity

Its original state was “very well done documentation”, for the record.

Sure, but even by of 2015 there were loads of parts of the API reference that were just fundamentally lacking any explanation of what certain functions did. There’s no point in saying “it used to be good” when it’s been getting progressively worse for nearly a decade.

[Thygrrr]

@neginfinity

Its original state was “very well done documentation”, for the record.

You should check the documentation for MongoDB Atlas and MongoDB Realm:
That is what I would call a well done documentation.

Unity docs were ok, sometimes good. But never “very well done”.

[neginfinity]

@Thygrrr

You should check the documentation for MongoDB Atlas and MongoDB Realm:
That is what I would call a well done documentation.

Unity docs were ok, sometimes good. But never “very well done”.

You’re trying to argue about one true definition of “very well done” for some reason. I’m not sure if discussing that is worth the time.

You need to check Qt documentation and Unreal documentation.
Qt used to be “gold standard”. Unreal used to be “quite bad”.

In your example I was unable to jump to API refernce sufficiently quickly, and getting to C++ class index required going through a menu, where it became obvious that it is a doxygen dump without any additional information.

For example:

That doesn’t tell me anything useful.

Compare it with:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Mesh.html
Which is very thorough. Or something like this.

Like I said, gold standard used to be Qt (and not your link), but it’s been ages since I worked with it, so maybe things changed since.

[steego]

A tip for the package docs, if you find a link like Home Page. | Package Manager UI website for a version of a package, replace what’s after the @ with “latest” to go to the latest version, Redirect to... title of new-page for example.