Improving ddoc

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, Jan 01, 2015 at 01:19:06AM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 12/31/14 1:12 PM, Dicebot wrote:
> >I don't feel like any small change in DDOC will make me like/use it.
> 
> I'm envisioning quite an interesting possibility in which certain
> constructs are automatically converted to macros:
> 
> `hello world` --> $(BACKQUOTED hello world)
> "hello world" --> $(QUOTED hello world)
> 'hello world' --> $(SQUOTED hello world)
> _hello world_ --> $(UNDERLINED hello world)
> *hello world* --> $(STARRED hello world)
> 
> ... and such. Then generating nice formatting for each of these
> constructs is achieved by simply defining these macros appropriately.
[...]

Nice idea, but I think _..._ will have to be left out, due to the
prevalence of special meanings of _ currently in use. For example, _abc
currently means "abc" without any automatic highlighting (e.g., if abc
were a parameter or function name); _abc: at the beginning of a line
means a literal word "abc" where otherwise abc: would mean a section
heading "abc"; and abc_def: means a section heading with two words "abc
def".

I anticipate that overloading _ to do even more than this will only lead
to a nasty mess where it's impossible for the non-expert to figure out
what it actually means.


T

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