Re: Project Start: Section 1

On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 05:08  AM, Angel Faus wrote:
>> I very much dislike XML for writing.  It'd be nice to use some kind
> I agree with you. XML is very unpleasant to write.

I certainly agree with that, but I was thinking of something very basic 
-- just enough to get it into a database, for example.  You'd just copy 
a standard template and fill in the fields.  Like perhaps:

<section>
<id> 1.1.2.1 </id>
<title> Numeric Context </title>
<text>
Numeric Context is a <glossary>context</> full of cheesy goodness.  For 
example, the following code will put <code>$obj</> in <code>int</> 
context:
<code>
     my int $i = $obj;
  </code>
.... blah blah blah ...
</text>
<see>
     <also> Context </also>
     <also> Numeric Values </also>
</see>
<tests>
     ...
</tests>
</section>

I agree it's more of a pain, but it's also conveying a *heck* of a lot 
more information, for not really that much more to type.  There'd only 
be 10-15 allowed tags.  (Note the empty closing tag on <code>$obj</>.  
My tools handle this cheat, which makes it a heck of a lot more 
readable to put in lots of inline tags.)

My point being it's a lot easier to convert from XML-->POD than 
POD-->XML, and if it's in a descriptive form like this we have a lot of 
web tools that will do slicing and autoformatting, so we can try out 
different approaches more easily online.  Otherwise someone has to go 
in by hand to do every one of them later.

(I'm also hoping POD itself will change to be more descriptive, perhaps 
partly based on what we learn here, but that'll be in the distant 
future.)

MikeL