On Sun, 11 Nov 2001, Gerald Richter wrote:
> > I think POD has to go for this project. At least in its default form.
> >
> > We need something way more structured, that maintains API details to the
> > extreme, like JavaDOC does, only we want something easier/better than
> > JavaDOC.
> >
>
> I don't know anything of JavaDOC, so what does it give to us ? If it
> something like doxygen for C, which scans the C code and combine it with the
> comments to generate documenation ?
Yes, it's a bit like doxygen that way. The problem being that POD has no
defined way to write: "This method is a class method and takes the
following parameters, and returns the following value in scalar context".
We can define a psuedo way of doing it, but it will either be
non-validating, or ugly.
> > I'd suggest XML for docs, in particular sdocbook (simple docbook), but I
> > know it gives people hives, so maybe an extended POD format would work
> > (but it starts to get real ugly when you extend it to this extent).
> >
>
> I really don't like to write docs in XML, it's much more harder to read in
> the source (as long as you don't use special tools)
I think that's a bit of a falacy of XML. Sure, if you use a huge number of
tags, but you just don't if you want source readability. In the end it's
no worse than POD (nested lists anyone?)
> Does anybody know what the current discussion about pod in the Perl
> community is ? Are there any intentions the extent it, for example to
> display tables ?
I doubt it. It's just not doable in a POD-like way, except by using
"=begin cals_table" or something similar! (SDL has an attempt, but IMHO
it's more ugly than using markup).
--
<Matt/>
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