Why I'm hesitating to switch to D

[James Fisher]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Walter Bright
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com>wrote:

> Ddoc is:
>
> 1. Rather trivial to learn & use. A website/book/community devoted to how
> to use it is completely unnecessary. It's fairly obvious how to use it (for
> someone with a basic familiarity with HTML) by simply looking at a couple
> examples.
>
> 2. It automatically tracks the D language, so D code examples are always
> properly highlighted.
>
> 3. It is always available and installed for anyone who installs D.
>
> 4. The D compiler and Ddoc are always in sync. No begging for updates from
> 3rd parties, no lags even if they get right on incorporating necessary
> updates.
>
> 5. It is not necessary to direct anyone to install some third party system
> that may not even exist on all the platforms D does. In general, we try to
> minimize dependency on things that are not default installed across
> operating systems.
>
> 6. And lastly, it works, it delivers, and has for many years. It's proven
> its worth.
>

OK.  These are all good reasons to maintain code documentation in Ddoc --
i.e., the Phobos documentation.  Let's drop the argument over replacing the
documentation format.  What I'm not convinced of is that Ddoc is has any
advantage over a generic markup format when it comes to the homepage,
associated pages (FAQ, acknowledgements, etc.), howtos, or even the language
reference.  When I look over any of those documents --
lex.dd<https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/d-programming-language.org/blob/master/lex.dd>to
take a random example -- I don't see any semantics that can't be
expressed even in something as simple as Markdown.  Forcing people to write
their howtos in Ddoc is asking too much for no good reason.
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