On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 05:08 AM, Angel Faus wrote:
I certainly agree with that, but I was thinking of something very basic -- just enough to get it into a database, for example. You'd just copy a standard template and fill in the fields. Like perhaps:I very much dislike XML for writing. It'd be nice to use some kindI agree with you. XML is very unpleasant to write.
<section>
<id> 1.1.2.1 </id>
<title> Numeric Context </title>
<text>
Numeric Context is a <glossary>context</> full of cheesy goodness. For example, the following code will put <code>$obj</> in <code>int</> context:
<code>
my int $i = $obj;
</code>
.... blah blah blah ...
</text>
<see>
<also> Context </also>
<also> Numeric Values </also>
</see>
<tests>
...
</tests>
</section>
I agree it's more of a pain, but it's also conveying a *heck* of a lot more information, for not really that much more to type. There'd only be 10-15 allowed tags. (Note the empty closing tag on <code>$obj</>. My tools handle this cheat, which makes it a heck of a lot more readable to put in lots of inline tags.)
My point being it's a lot easier to convert from XML-->POD than POD-->XML, and if it's in a descriptive form like this we have a lot of web tools that will do slicing and autoformatting, so we can try out different approaches more easily online. Otherwise someone has to go in by hand to do every one of them later.
(I'm also hoping POD itself will change to be more descriptive, perhaps partly based on what we learn here, but that'll be in the distant future.)
MikeL
