Re: RFC 357 (v1) Perl should use XML for documentation instead ofPOD

[Greg Williams]

>XML, on the other hand, uses & as the escaping mechanism, helping
>a reader sort-out deeply-nested escapings.

...

>POD has a good advantage in that it's design allows for it to
>embed well into code.  If documentation is to be alongside
>code, a direction to consider is to have the Perl
>program be an XML document itself, with the code inside of it,
>between designated tags.  This would allow for the entire
>Perl program/document to be rendered in a unified manner, using
>one tool, and conforming to one meta-language, XML.

By making a Perl program an XML document, the programmer is forced to 
read the XML.  It should be noted that XML isn't supposed to be read 
by a person - it is meant to be read by a computer.  The W3C document 
"XML in 10 points" states this as point three.

 From http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points :
>XML files are text files, as I said above, but even less than HTML 
>are they meant to be read by humans. They are text files, because 
>that allows experts (such as programmers) to more easily debug 
>applications, and in emergencies, they can use a simple text editor 
>to fix a broken XML file.


.greg
-- 
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