Ddoc macro syntax

[Jacob Carlborg via Digitalmars-d]

On 2016-09-16 01:53, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 9/15/2016 4:06 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> I was thinking more about it and figured we could introduce a special
> macro at
>> the very beginning of a .ddoc file or "Macros:" section called
>> DDOC_MACRO_CALL_SYNTAX. It may be defined one of the following:
>>
>> DDOC_MACRO_CALL_SYNTAX = DDOC
>>
>> That's today's syntax.
>>
>> DDOC_MACRO_CALL_SYNTAX = CPP
>>
>> A macro will be invoked as MACRO(a1, a2).
>
> That will break every usage of function calling examples. (It works in
> CPP because if MACRO is not a macro, the text is left unchanged. In
> Ddoc, a non-existent macro is replaced by the empty string.)
>
>
>> DDOC_MACRO_CALL_SYNTAX = $CPP
>>
>> A macro will be invoked as $MACRO(a1, a2)
>>
>> DDOC_MACRO_CALL_SYNTAX = LaTeX
>>
>> Macro invocation is \MACRO{a1}{a2}.
>>
>> This definition is modular, i.e. it doesn't carry beyond the current
> document
>> (otherwise the semantics of a .dd file depends on the .ddoc file(s)
> it's used
>> with).
>>
>> Macro definitions stay the same using $1, $2 etc. but macros invoked
> by them
>> would need to obey the DDOC_MACRO_CALL_SYNTAX defined at the top.
>
>
> Alternatives:
> 1. accept more than one syntax
> 2. have the first encountered usage set the mode

My biggest issue with the macros is not the syntax (I don't like that 
either) but it's that one needs to use them too much.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg