On Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 12:33:58PM +0200, Mark Overmeer wrote: > * Smylers ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [070616 09:09]: > > > * Damian Conway ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [070615 00:17]: > > > > * Pod 6 is both a structural and a semantic scheme; you can specify > > > > both the structure of a document, and the meaning of its various > > > > components > > > > > > Yes, and that is one of the things which worries me most *You can*. > > > It's full freedom, > > > > You're concerned that an aspect of Perl 6 might have too much freedom? > > Isn't Perl all about giving users freedom to choose their own way of > > doing something? > > Why treat documentation as a second-class citizen all the time? Why > have a standard syntax for regexes, and not for docs? Aren't you glad > that at last we get a standard for OO programming and named parameters? > The boundary between freedom and anacharchy is faint.
The docs *do* have a standard syntax. I think you've been arguing for a more *specific* standard syntax and semantics. You mention OOP. For Perl 5 we have a standard, if very general, syntax and "open" semantics that have allowed people to implement OOP in a variety of ways. This was all well and good for a while until we realized that there should be some more reasonable defaults (in both syntax and semantics) for common operations in OOP. I think it's the same thing with POD6. It's "open" enough that many documentation systems can be built from it (man pages, books, magazines, wikis, etc.) For some of those documentation systems we'll have nice conventions and other conventions will grow as needed. If we find that convention isn't enough in specific areas, we'll start to grow requirements for those cases. Requirements will be enforced by the tools we use, not by the documentation specification (that way we can use the same source document for multiple purposes with different requirements). Also, I don't think that documentation is being treated as second-class at all. It's being treated as first-class but different. To form a poor analogy, imagine threads woven together to make a tapestry. The blue threads are just as important as the red threads, but they each may have different purposes in the overall design. my two cents, -Scott -- Jonathan Scott Duff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
