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Postings from March 2005
On Wed, 2005-03-16 at 12:25, David Storrs wrote: > I quite like <> as the bracketing characters. They are > visually distinctive, they connect well with their adjacent C/X/L/etc > without visually merging into it (compare L<foo> with L[foo]), and in > the circumstance that you want to bracket an unbalanced bracket, you > just double (triple, whatever) up and add some space: > > C<< $x > $y >> > > Looks pretty clear to me. You are confusing aesthetics with usability. Yes, the above looks clear, but then I have to type "C<< " and " >>" just to tell the POD parser that there might be unbalanced < or > characters in my string. You're failing to apply Larry's rules of Perl 6. Huffman and the "easy things easy, while hard things are possible" principles demand that a common case not require copious extra gunk, and noting could be simpler than: C[$x > $y] is about as B[easy] as it gets in [Perl] vs: C<< $x > $y >> is about as B<easy> as it gets in L[Perl|perl] without going full Wikish: [=$x > $y] is about as *easy* as it gets in [Perl] However, saving a couple of keystrokes and cleaning up the above text is inconsequential compared to the massive savings in terms of taking advantage of the legions of people who are learning Wiki syntax these days. Making POD *more* Wiki-like without sacrificing useful features of POD is invaluable in terms of tech writers and other non-Perl-programmers writing useful docs in POD! -- Aaron Sherman <ajs@ajs.com> Senior Systems Engineer and Toolsmith "It's the sound of a satellite saying, 'get me down!'" -ShriekbackThread Previous | Thread Next