On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 17:18:21 +0000 (GMT), Jules Bean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > On 21 Jan 1999, Ben Gertzfield wrote: >> >>>>> "Dale" == Dale Scheetz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Ben> I've recently looked into the doc-base control file format. It Ben> seems pretty sane, except I realized since it does not provide Ben> for any macro expansion,
Dale> Can't you use something like m4 as a pre-processor and do macro Dale> expansion that way? >> That would work, but it would be nice if it were built into the >> control file language. Many people will need this functionality in >> the future. > In general, it is IMHO silly to rewrite, yet again, a macro > substitution engine into a special purpose piece of software > (doc-base) when we already have several good, fast macro > substituters (cpp, m4) and a framework from which they can easily be > run (debian/rules). Utterly agree. To prove it, I'm going to quote my docreg file which uses m4: changequote([, ])dnl define([common_elements], [Title: Debian Metadata Manual Subject: debian/policy Description: This manual contains a guide and a reference to the Debian Metadata Project. The Project's purpose, and the purpose of this document, is to outline a set of metadata elements, to specify an interface for package maintainers use in order to provide metadata about resources in their packages, to specify a unified subject catalog for categorizing metadata, and to specify an API for developers who wish to make use of a system's metadata. Language: en Creator: A. P. Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Creator: Marcus Brinkmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 1998-06-29 Rights: copyright/GPL Type: specification])dnl Identifier: debian-metadata/debian-metadata.sgml Format: text/sgml common_elements Identifier: debian-metadata/debian-metadata.html/index.html Format: text/html common_elements Identifier: debian-metadata/debian-metadata.text Format: text/plain common_elements
