Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon wrote:
Aaron Sherman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:First off, I agree that looking at CSS makes sense as a point of reference, but this should make just as much sense for troff, texinfo, ps, text, etc. A header+table lines work just fine for an internal representation, and there are times you want to say:
Still, tables are useful, so here's a simple way to get the kind of table we see above, without the HTMLish trap of pseudo-layout:
Because one of the features of POD is that documentation tends to be readable in markup form, an C<=>-introduced markup seems like it would not work well. Instead, we use C<< H<...> >> (headings) and C<< T<...> >> (table body) like so:
H< C<$_> | C<$x> | Type of Match Implied | Matching Code >
T< Any | CodeC<< <$> >> | scalar sub truth | match if C<$x($_)> >
I worry that, with that syntax, someone might try to nest a table. I
also think that the H<>/T<> syntax is a bit wrong--to use CSS
terminology, tables are a block construct, not an inline one.[1] Instead, I'd recommend something like this:
Function Name Developer Time Table foo() ajs 1mo. bar() brent 2dy. fiz() larry 2mo.
Release name QA Testing Time super_foo() randal 2wk. mega_bar() dan 3wk.
and so on. The idea being that sometimes you wish to re-head your columns witout re-calculating layout, which is why I chose a heading and table pair.
=table C<$_> | C<$x> | Type of Match Implied | Matching CodeThat's (the above comments aside) the same thing, and as I said when Luke suggested it, it seems fine if that's the way we'd prefer to go. I do want to make sure that there's some way to associate a caption, though. HTML doesn't have a real caption concept, but many markup languages do.
=row Any | CodeC<< <$> >> | scalar sub truth | match if C<$x($_)>
Is the general consensus,then, that an C<=>-introduced form would be better? I do agree that we don't want the capability to nest tables, as that DOES break POD down into a presentation system, which it was never meant to be. So perhaps the balanced syntax is too misleading there.
