At 05:33 PM 8/3/00 -0700, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> >>>>> "Drew" == Drew Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>Drew> I suppose I could... I was planning on having a nice checklist of
>Drew> features/systems that would be a pain to do in a fixed width font. An
>Drew> HTML table would make my life MUCH easier there. Is there something in
>Drew> POD that makes tables easier?
>
>Why don't you write it as XML, then use Template::Toolkit and the DOM
>interface to generate what you want.
One problem is deciding off the bat what you want to support in terms of
XML tags. Perhaps this could resolved quickly by simply mapping the POD
tags to XML from the start as a lowest common denominator format.
And then also using an XML Editor that helps you conform to the DOM.
I have to say that I find it much easier to write in POD because it's a
lowest common denominator format right off the bat. And then generate other
things from it (could even generate XML and do a transform on that I guess).
From my old fogey perspective, for writing raw docs, I dislike writing XML
about as much as I dislike writing direct HTML. Perhaps I dislike it even
more because every XML markup is different and I hate having all the XML
markups I deal with swim about my small head. I already know POD and POD is
a suitable LCD language, so...
Another thing that is nice about a POD format from the beginning is kind of
the same thing that is nice about coding in Perl. Instant gratification. I
know I can see immediately the results of my writing. As opposed to going
through a compile cycle because I am already writing in one of the formats
I like to read docs in.
I know there are XML editors out there though that can be fed a DOM of
sorts. And that could probably help that issue.
Anyway, I guess for these reasons I''ve been a fan of Stas' guide generator
because it's easy for me and I already know POD. Although I imagine it
would be an interesting addition to the Guide Generator to make it use XML
instead of POD as the basis.
And who knows, maybe I am just being old by suggesting that native POD has
advantages over XML... and that maybe COBOL could be used to format the
tables for the feature comparison. Oops, I realize I hadn't suggested that.
Yet. :)
Later,
Gunther
