On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Trent W. Buck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I like your points, here are just a few comments I had.
> Literate Haskell means the user manual source has to be TeX. A
> separate tree would allow us to evaluate alternative source formats,
> such as texinfo, docbook or restructured text (reST).
I don't think this is strictly true unless the alternative format
doesn't allow \begin{code} ... \end{code} or lines beginning with the
greater than symbol. On the other hand, your idea about using docbook
is interesting to me. I've never used docbook but I have, on more
than one occasion, admired non-pdf output from authors using docbook.
I have a mental model where latex tends to generate very attractive
pdfs and docbook generates attractive web-friendly formats like html.
I don't think very many people use our pdf copy of the manual
seriously, but I do think a lot of people reference the html version.
This is an argument to have a format that is optimized for good web
presentation, although I do think our current layout in good.
> It would also make it easier for us to include translations of the
> user manual (into other human languages). It's not obvious to me how
> that can be achieved using literate haskell.
I can imagine this as something that is hard to maintain without a
documentation manager dedicated to keeping the languages updated.
> Lastly, Emacs isn't very good at handling two very different languages
> (like Haskell/TeX or XHTML/Javascript) in a single file, and tools
> like literate-haskell-mode or mumamo only partially address this. :-)
I haven't really noticed this as a problem in .lhs files.
I'm in support of this experiment/change.
I think it's good that we made it this far using literate haskell, but
I also welcome this change. I think for the arguments presented above
that separation is better than our use of literate haskell. I also
think literate haskell makes more sense for people that are presenting
the code as snippets, such as in emails or blog posts. For user
documentation I don't think it's as useful.
Now how to make this transition easiest? We don't have hunk move
patches and I don't think we should bother renaming the files.
Leaving them as literate haskell seems fine to me.
Thanks,
Jason
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