From: JamesBritt <james@...>
Date: 2002-10-23T15:54:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby.bah! (was Re: XMLParser, NQXML... and also RAA.succ)

> >> Ruby, on the other hand, has two going on three different
> >> formats, if I'm understanding what Sean is saying correctly.
> > Sadly yes... however there is a saving grace with rubydoc, it's
> > standard is XML and the other utilities export XML... which means
> > that anyone can write a stylesheet that'll convert rdoc-> rubydoc
> > or rd-> rubydoc. These stylesheets will be included in the base
> > rubydoc installation.
>
> In some ways, though, I still think that this is probably the wrong
> approach. IMO, either rdoc or rd needs to die. Ideally, rdoc will
> pick up the ability to parse rd comments cleanly (perhaps spitting
> out warnings) so that there only needs to be one primary
> documentation tool.

I tend to agree.  Getting people to write documentation, and making that
documentation readably available, might be a lot easier with a single standard.


<snip />

> I have to be honest and say that I don't *get* why rubydoc *as a
> tool* is necessary. If you're going to make it an aggregator so that
> the user can have the equivalent of a single interface like users of
> the ActiveState Perl package do ... that's cool. If you're going to
> make it a super-duper version of ri with Rimport, even better! (See?
> I forgot another Ruby documentation tool.) But if it's just going to
> be Yet Another Documentation Tool, I've got to say that I don't see
> the point.

My goal with Rimport was to avoid inventing anything new, but rather to exploit
what was already familiar and available.  It's a bridge between RDoc and ri.
Theoretically, it could be rewritten as a loadable output formatter for RDoc or
as an XSLT transformation.  Proof is left as an exercise for the reader.


James

>
> -austin
> -- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.10.23 at 02.32.37
>
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