Andrei's Google Talk

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2010-08-07 00:54, Walter Bright wrote:
> Don wrote:
>> The reason they're the same is that the docs were originally written
>> in html. The original conversion to ddoc was done via search and replace.
>> One of the HUGE benefits of ddoc is that it does highlighting of the D
>> code. That instantly saved Walter a lot of time.
>> Seriously, converting it to ddoc did improve productivity.
>
> Here's what it has done, and this is real live experience because they
> were originally 100% html:
>
> 1. Yes, Don is right. It has improved ENORMOUSLY the productivity in
> those documents. I'm talking doubling or even tripling it.
>
> 2. I can comment out sections with $(COMMENT blah blah) and have them
> elided from the output. HTML comments remain in the output.
>
> 3. It has enabled the site to be written in correct, conforming HTML.
> Previously, it was a mess, and I didn't know what was wrong with it
> because it rendered ok anyway.
>
> 4. HTML has zero provision for conditional compilation. Want two HTML
> pages from the same source? Write two HTML pages. Note that the D1 and
> D2 docs are generated from the same source, this makes it easy to
> determine what's different between them.
>
> 5. It enabled me to produce a common look & feel for the whole site,
> which is hundreds of pages. This was just impossible before.
>
> 6. Even better, I can *change* the look and feel of the site with just
> editting a handful of macros.
>
> 7. I can update URLs across the site trivially, such as if bugzilla
> changes its URL.
>
> 8. As Don mentioned, it will automagically syntax highlight D code.
>
> 9. Grep doesn't work well with HTML tags. You really need an HTML-aware
> editor. Ddoc works with any editor (all you really need is a parentheses
> matcher).
>
> 10. HTML is a visually butt-ugly format that makes my eyes bleed pus.
> Very hard to read.

I think for any serious HTML work you need a server side language to 
help you.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg