On 09-06-2008 11:49:35 +0200, Luca Barbato wrote: > Ciaran McCreesh wrote: >> On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:50:11 +0200 >> Luca Barbato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>> So how, specifically, is PMS "wrongly written", and why hasn't >>>> anyone who thinks so bothered to provide details? >>> - rewrite it as an rfc using a markup among xmlrfc, docbook, guidexml. >> >> What technical reason is there to use a markup that's more work for >> those of us doing the writing? Writing XML is a huge pain in the ass >> compared to latex. > > More people can understand those markups, they are consistent with the > gentoo documentation, they look better on screen than on paper, tex is a > great typesetting markup to write academic books. Right tool for the > right task. It address the problem "PMS is anything but accessible"
I think this is a bit of a pointless discussion. If people insist on reading the source and are scared of LaTeX, then the same can happen for any other language. PMS is available as pdf (or can easily being made by typing `make`), which is readable IMO, and one could always try how far one gets with a LaTeX->XML translator and XSLT transformations afterwards. Still, what is the point of requiring language X over Y? I for one prefer LaTeX over any of the formats you mentioned before, but that should not be of any value here. >>> - use EBNF when describing a syntax. >> >> Is there any indication that this is any clearer? EBNF gets messy when >> it comes to describing the whitespace rules, for example. > > It is less ambiguous than natural language. That solves the issue "The > syntax is underspecified" Perhaps some examples showing the syntax could improve the situation here? -- Fabian Groffen Gentoo on a different level -- gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
