On Tuesday, December 16, 2014 4:55:39 PM UTC-5, Ivar Nesje wrote:

>
>   * Is code from Docile.jl, Lexicon.jl, and Markdown.jl being used / 
> incorporated into Julia proper? 
>
> Yes. 
>
>   * Will the new syntax be `doc "..."`, `@doc "..." ->`, or something 
> else? 
>
> The -> is probably going away, but final syntax is not yet set in stone 
> (nor in code). 
>
>   * What is `md"Some *text* here`? Will Julia support and/or require that 
> for the new docstrings? If so, what is the benefit of `md"this"` over 
> `"this"`? 
>
> The benefit is that `md"this"` has an explicit format, so that we can have 
> more formats in the future. The value has been discussed and you can have 
> different formats by other means. I like the way it makes markdown 
> optional, but others want to save two characters to type. 
>
>   * Regarding the docs currently at <
> http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.3/>, does all of that content 
> currently come only from the contents of julia/doc and below? 
>
> Yes 
>
>   * Will the docstrings in 0.4 be online at, say, 
> http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/ , integrated with the rendered 
> .rst docs? Or are they intended to be strictly available via the repl? 
> Hm... to avoid duplication, are any files in julia/doc slated to be diced 
> up, reformatted into markdown, and inserted into source as docstrings? 
>
> Maybe, but it's hard to predict the future. Many files in Base are too 
> long already, and detailed docs will not make them shorter. For huge 
> codebases, I think it makes sense to fit as much code as possible on a 
> screen, and search in separate docs if I need to know more about a 
> function. 
>
>
Thanks, Ivar.

Regarding concerns of longish docstrings being cumbersome to edit around, 
one solution might be to use your editor's code-folding to by-default hide 
docstrings. Another might be to support having docstrings in separate files 
(e.g., foo.jl and an optional corresponding foo.jldoc for detailed 
docstrings).

-- John

Reply via email to