On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:50:12PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> I think we need to enumerate some goals for this proposed
> change. Here is a start:
>
> - Minimal disruption for current packages. The impact should be
> measured by numbers of packages impacted
<snip>
> At this point, I would say that Markdown/Resstructued text meets
> most of the goals above, as long as we restrict the markup to the
> list above:
I agree with the goals and thanks for "resetting" the discussion on
their grounds.
According to the goals you pointed out, it looks like that Markdown
would be a more than suitable choice in terms of availability of
implementations, matching of "mail-like" markup (which is actually one
of the design goal of the language), and minimal disruption.
[ Markdown would also be my choice in term of personal tastes. Not
that it matters, but I mention it to it make clear which is my
"church" in this respect :) ]
However, markdown would not be directly applicable to the content of
the long description field, as a RFC822 parser would give you, due to
'.'s used as paragraph separators. Sure the needed pre-processing to
fix that would be trivial, but it is *some kind* of
pre-processing. One can then wonder to which extent we would allow
pre-processing before the markup processor without considering that
need a "disruption" of current long descriptions.
I just felt like pointing that out, because it can put back into play
some other language which can be considered "non disrupting" by
allowing some extra pre-processing bits. ... nevertheless I completely
agree that something like Markdown + the minimal paragraph separator
pre-processing looks like a completely reasonable implementation
plan. Out of curiosity, would restructured text be immune to this
problem?
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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