Improving ddoc

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 1 January 2015 at 19:33, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 12/31/14 10:17 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>
>> On 1 January 2015 at 05:50, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
>>
>> <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>>
>>> In wake of the recent discussions on improving ddoc syntax we're looking
>>> at
>>> doing something about it. Please discuss any ideas you might have here.
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> One simple starter would be to allow one escape character, e.g. the
>>> backtick
>>> (`), as a simple way to expand macros: instead of $(MACRO arg1, arg2) one
>>> can write `MACRO arg1, arg2`.
>>
>>
>> I don't really have any particular opinions on this topic, but the
>> only feeling I've really had in the past is, "why is it so different
>> from doxygen?"
>> Most people are already familiar with doxygen.
>>
>> Why is doxygen insufficient? Is there a reason ddoc was invented
>> rather than supporting the practically-industry-standard doxygen
>> format from the start?
>
>
> No particular system was clearly dominant when Walter invented ddoc.

Okay.

> Also I might be frequenting the wrong circles; most people I know and myself aren't
> fluent at all with doxygen. -- Andrei

What do you tend to use instead?

I miss doxygen's '\' tags. For instance, '\a argName' to refer to a
function argument argName, which will be formatted appropriately and
all that. I find it a lot less visually distracting.
It might also be interesting to note that doxygen implemented markdown
support quite some time back, so I think there's precedent for people
expecting that markdown be available for use in their documentation.