Sean M. Burke wrote:
> At 16:52 2002-04-08 +0800, Stas Bekman wrote:
> 
>> Since this discussion always had the same end: NO to L<text|uri>, I 
>> came with a new sequence, to circumvent the broken record experience. 
>> Unless you have a technical argument against adding this new sequence 
>> lets put it in, adjust the parsers, converters and move on spending 
>> our time on other productive things.
> 
> 
> Limiting my objections to only technical considerations?  You 
> sweet-talker you!

My request to limit the discussion to technical consideration was to get 
away from talking 80/20 rules and other theories and get to the practice.

> How's this: currently, I _technical_ly _consider_ that new formatting 
> codes should be added only when necessary.  The fact that you ran into 
> trouble when trying to use Pod to write a book does not constitute 
> necessity, especially since perlpod says (said?  I think I left it in) 
> something to the effect of "no-one's saying this is enough of a language 
> for writing a book!".
> But lo, I wrote a whole book in Pod and didn't feel the need for this 
> even once.

My book includes lots of references to the web and some of them look ugly.

Also the new perl.apache.org site is generated from PODs (mainly) and we 
need this functionality for other reasons: relative URLs for 
autogenerated pages like index.html (which don't exist at the time the 
POD is parsed and rendered). So here is another example where a pretty 
normal use of POD is not satisfying. Actually currently it's not 
feasible to markup relative links with L<>, and =for html is not 
helping, since the URL is inside of the text. So I'm not talking about a 
convenience here, but a need.

(the preview is here: http://perl.apache.org/preview/modperl-docs/dst_html/)

> That being said, that doesn't mean that a U<...> would be a /bad/ idea.  
> I'm a bit unhappy with bringing the number of |-using entities from a 
> horrid one to a doubly-horrid two, so I wonder whether a different 
> syntax might be better.   But the basic idea, I'm still thinking about.  
> Thought, I should point out, is something that usually happens /off 
> list/ -- a lesson I learned from p5p.

I've never pushed for '|', I've suggested in my original post and said 
that any other syntax is fine with me. I'm after functionality here.

> I have been thinking about your proposal, and will continue to think 
> about it.  When my book is out of tech edit (presumably by the middle of 
> next month), the first thing I'll do is try to get out the new Pod 
> parser class, which I've had on hold for far too long.  As I make it 
> conform to perlpodspec, I will consider whether it's a good time to drop 
> in something like U<>.
> 
> Then I will destroy, incinerate, annihilate, and otherwise stomp on the 
> current Pod::Html abomination, and replace it with something using my 
> new Pod parser system.
> So, if I am not displaying enough of a cold-sweat panic to rush U<> into 
> perlpodspec and to then rally everyone at gunpoint (if only!) to change 
> all the tools accordingly, it's because of the fact that dicking around 
> in Pod::Html RIGHT NOW EVERYBODY RIGHT NOW would be a total waste of 
> time, because it's going to get replaced immanently.

Now you are talking :)

Any early ideas of what would be the accepted syntax like? I need the 
functionality NOW, therefore I'm going to extend Pod::POM to give me 
this functionality and it'd be cool if I'll have to change less things 
when the new spec is finally released.

Too bad we don't hit 5.8.0 though :(
Thanks Sean!

__________________________________________________________________
Stas Bekman            JAm_pH ------> Just Another mod_perl Hacker
http://stason.org/     mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org
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