Back from vacation and already asking so many questions.  <grin>  At
least this one I can answer right away, the other two I couldn't come
up with anything meaningful.

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 8:29 AM, Rick McGuire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've never been a big fan of railroad track diagrams for syntax
> diagrams, but they were an IBM standard so they sort of got imposed on
> the Object Rexx docs.  Now that I've had to update a few of these, I'm
> even less of a fan of these.  I find them hard to read, hard to
> update, and easy to get wrong.

I've gotten used to them, but they are hard to update.

> I much prefer the simpler syntax that
> MFC used in TRL.  For example, here's the railroad track diagram for
> OVERLAY()
>
>>>-OVERLAY(new,target------------------------------------------->
>
>>--+---------------------------------------+--)----------------><
>   +-,--+---+--+-------------------------+-+
>        +-n-+  +-,--+--------+--+------+-+
>                    +-length-+  +-,pad-+
>
> vs. Mike's syntax in TRL:
>
> OVERLAY(new,target[,[n][,[length][,pad]]])

I prefer this syntax also, however I don't like everything crammed
together so much.

OVERLAY(new, target [,[n] [,[length] [,pad]]])

although it is hard to say where the spaces should go.

It's a more generic way to show syntax so it seems most anyone would
recognize it.

The other thing about the railroad tracks is that they often break
across pages making them even harder to understand.  Using this
method, I think it is more likely things would stay on the same page.

I'm mostly in favor of changing.  Let's see what David says.

I'm not sure how much work it is to change all of them in all the docs
at one time.  I wonder if we could do it gradually?

--
Mark Miesfeld

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
Oorexx-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-devel

Reply via email to