> SDL follows other programming languages fairly closely in that fopen (in
> this case) returns a /pointer/ to the variable FILE_HANDLE_IDENTIFIER
> ... here's a php example to illustrate what I'm talking about:

Anyone who has experience with handling files in any other programming 
or scripting language should not have a problem. The issue is with 
people who don't have any previous experience, where SDL is their first 
encounter of such concepts. It's sometimes hard for people with vast 
amounts of experience to imagine how those with no experience might 
interpret such documentation.

Anyway the real question is should the POV documentation assume at least 
a basic knowledge of how file IO works in other languages? If yes, it 
should probably state this at the start of the section (and perhaps a 
useful link for those without such experience), or if no then it should 
explain the concept of a file handle and how it is used (surely can't 
take more than a paragraph or two).

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