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[Doc-SIG] Monty: A structured text syntax idea

Tony J Ibbs (Tibs) tony at lsl.co.uk
Mon Feb 7 04:24:07 EST 2000 
I've got to dash this off quickly before going into a two-day training
course, so haven't had time to read all of the cumulative thread that has
happened since Friday morning - sorry.

Moshe - I wasn't trying to get at you particularly personally - you've
obviously put a lot of thought and work into your proposal. BUT. When the
last round of doc string discussions happened (a couple of years ago) I was
a strong TeX or HTML proponent (XML didn't exist), but it soon became clear
that *for many people* (i.e., not for me) the use of that sort of "verbose"
markup is an immediate turnoff. Note that both TeX and HTML, and thus also
all SGML variants, count as verbose in this context, and so also does your
markup. Whilst I personally find it hard to read your markup because the
delimiters don't stand out visually to me (and no, XML needn't be much more
verbose - hell, it's only typing anyway), experience both last round and
this round shows that verbose markup just won't fly (people in general won't
do it). Whereas the single-character style markups *do* work (heh - people
use them in email!).

This argument was rehashed in the latest round of DOC-SIG discussions as
well, and the same result happened.

The reference to the Tim Peters' doc string test thingy was because I came
in wanting to delimit EXAMPLE sections, and Tim managed to convince me that
I didn't need them (i.e., to change my mind - don't you hate it when people
do that!).

Sorry for the quick and probably by now out of context message, hope this
makes sense.

Tibs
--
Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)      http://www.tibsnjoan.demon.co.uk/
.. "equal" really means "in some sense the same, but maybe not
.. the sense you were hoping for", or, more succinctly, "is
.. confused with". (Gordon McMillan, Python list, Apr 1998)
My views! Mine! Mine! (Unless Laser-Scan ask nicely to borrow them.)
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