hello,

> > is one of the most useful tools I have ever used.  If you are writing 
> > any sort of documentation then I *highly* recommend checking it out
> I strongly oppose that point.  There is no need at all to bother
> with pandoc when you write documentation.  (It may be useful for
> other purposes, i have no idea).

yes ... what's the point of using another format than postscript
directly. also: using an high level language instead of
writing everything in assembly is a chance to lose control over what
you're writing. live is long enough to waste time ...

i would like to suggest 2 reasons to use pandoc (and the markdown format):
it will make the edition and the review of the document much more

* easier
* inclusive (people are able to read markdown format... but latex, html
  or troff is too much for lot of people)

that said: i'll really give troff a try again when i will figure out how
to create templates for the documents i need (as i said in a previous
message: i have a layout problem)

> The worst one
> which you must avoid at all cost is DocBook, closely followed
> by Markdown and related formats.

agree for docbook but can you explain us what's so wrong with keeping
simple things simple the way markdown allows us? i personally prefer
textile but markdown became kinda defacto wiki syntax standard with lot
of variations.

i really like to use human readable formats so markdown and yaml became
formats i use every day and enjoy it.

> So, when talking about documentation, i have never encountered any
> problem that even made me look at pandoc,

there is no problem with other formats but can't you admit that for many
people, something like

* denis
* brian
* doug

is easier to write, read and edit than << ?

<ul>
    <li>denis</li>
    <li>brian<li>
    <li>doug</li>
</ul>

also:

* transpiling is always a good thing to catch and avoid errors. for
  exemple: did you realize that the "brian" item is broken? this will
  not happen using a markdown as source
* the "proper" way to serialize an html/xml that is not intended to be
  edited isn't the way i write above but this below instead. and frankly
  i don't want to edit those kind of stuff

    <ul><li>denis</li><li>brian</li><li>doug</li></ul>

> The fact that pandoc appears to not support the most important
> documentation language, mdoc(7), at all, neither for input nor for
> output, already makes me raise an eyebrow or two

please contribute :)

also: the support of troff was removed from graphviz many years ago. how
sad is it?

> did, i still wouldn't see what it could possibly be useful for.

you don't have non technical colleagues, don't you ?

Sincerely

marc

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