<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Walter Bright <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:newshound2@digitalmars.com">newshound2@digitalmars.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On 6/28/2011 11:46 PM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I think it makes it hard when most of the pages are written in DDOC. It doesn't<br>
help to attract web designers.<br>
</blockquote>
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I have no idea what professional web designers use, but I did many web pages using html in a regular text editor.<br>
<br>
It was awful.<br></blockquote><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">I agree that HTML isn't great to work with directly. Even in the realm of small static sites, the general movement is towards treating HTML as a presentation format. If one wants a more convenient, non-semantic wrapper over it, we have things like <a href="http://haml-lang.com/">HAML</a>, <a href="http://haml-lang.com/">Jade</a>, and a million other things.</div>
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Using Ddoc literally doubled my productivity at creating web pages. Furthermore, I can easily change them. This came in really handy when David redid the look & feel.<br></blockquote><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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For example, I am able to create the C++ manuals for the Kindle and the <a href="http://digitalmars.com" target="_blank">digitalmars.com</a> web pages from the exact same source text, simply by using a different set of .ddoc macros.<br>
<br>
(Although you can supposedly convert html directly to Kindle books, in reality you'll discover you need to put out different html than you would for web display.)<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I respect that it increased your personal productivity. What's worth questioning is whether it increases the productivity of the growing community as a whole.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I don't aim to proselytize one mini-language over another, as they're much of a muchness. But I'd hope to convince people that:</div><div><ul><li>Besides required functionality, the key reason to choose one markup/documentation/html-generating format is popularity. It opens up development to new users, frees up maintainers of old documentation generators, and gives you new tools to use for free. Markup formats are one area where Might Is Right.</li>
<li>The documentation and the D website are separate problems and shouldn't be conflated. Many other languages take the approach of separating them and putting documentation in a subsite (e.g. <a href="http://doc.d-programming-language.org/">http://doc.d-programming-language.org/</a>). X-site coherence can be maintained with pretty much just CSS. As we all know, dividing the problem is the first step to conquering it.</li>
</ul></div></div>