dlangspec.pdf?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/5/13 10:14 AM, Philippe Sigaud wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org <mailto:SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org>>
> wrote:
>
>     On 1/5/13 4:17 AM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>
>         But I agree - Markdown would be significantly nicer to write the
>         spec
>         in... Ddoc has a too HTML-y feel to it for general writing.
>
>
>     But Markdown seems to have no macros.
>
>
> Indeed it has none, good point.
>
> Since I just remade a 180-pages tutorial on D templates in markdown
> without much trouble, I guess documentation and tutorial are different
> beasts. I felt no need for macros, really, but I can see how they are
> useful for Ddoc pages.

Yah, those are different beasts as there's a lot of repetitive crap the 
typical HTML site needs to carry. For example, the header, footer, and 
left-hand side column needs to be copied in all HTML files. Books don't 
need such, and to the extent they do (page styling, heading, and 
footing) that's easy to take care of. Markdown probably has some simple 
mechanism to e.g. set page numbers.

> Note that markdown was crafted to be readable by itself, even though its
> final goal is to be rendered in HTML. Ddoc has no such compulsion (some
> macros are a bit obscure for me when I read documentation in raw form)

Agreed.

> You know, I always felt Ddoc was a strange sublanguage bolted onto D. An
> elegant solution would be to have macros be D code, but I have nothing
> to propose here.

I learned with time that ddoc's macro system is quite coherent and well 
designed.


Andrei