From: Louis J Scoras Date: 2006-11-25T10:14:19+09:00 Subject: Re: RedCloth issues On 11/24/06, Paul Lutus wrote: > I don't actually hate the idea of using a library. I just feel bad for > people who choose the wrong library, or who haven't considered any other > way to solve a problem. I know you don't; but I think he did consider the problem more than you're giving him credit for. HTML is obviously a very convenient output format, but the problem with it is that it isn't easy to read. If you're writing a system for documentation that needs to be readable and writable wiki markup is a good way to go. That's what it was designed for. > And he can't figure out why, and I can. So I explained it. Sure. But I disagree that it's because the scheme he proposed is unworkable. You're not suggesting that harder problems haven't been solved are you? > No the problem is his having chosen RedCloth to try to solve a Textile > problem, which was originally meant to solve an HTML problem, which was > originally meant to solve a general markup problem. Don't you think you're being a little unfair? RedCloth doesn't try to solve a textile problem. They are both the same layer. Similarly, HTML is a very real target. Textile -> HTML > I'll say -- there is no chance that this elaborate, multilayered scheme will > work. That part is very simple. It can work, and it does work. This isn't the first project to use textile. > And this represents the ultimate solution to the drudgery of writing HTML by > hand. First, someone (now justly famous) wrote HTML to solve the problem > that most markup languages were too hard to use. Then someone wrote Textile > because HTML was too hard to use. Then someone wrote RedCloth because > Textile was too hard to use. > > And during this process, no one bothered to ask what the point was, or > whether the process of layering would eventually get to a point where the > entire scheme would collapse, and people would be reduced to writing simple > solutions to simple problems. I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't think that this "scheme" is overly complicated. Just because there might be a bug in the implementation doesn't mean that the problem is too complicated, nor that the tool is broken beyond fixing. -- Lou.