Which is great if I want to have to write a parser to extract the documentation from the source file, convert it to another format, write it to a separate file and use another tool to view it--but why?
Why not just write it in that destination format to start with?
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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Well I just use a half-dozen line pod.cgi or pseudopod.cgi and simply type in the name of the module as a query to the cgi and I see the pod in HTML. No manual parsing, no writing to a separate file, only a single tool to auto-parse and display.
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I just use a half-dozen line pod.cgi or pseudopod.cgi
Which means that everyone who wants to read the documentation has to be running a webserver.
And every time anyone wants to read a document, it has to be reparsed. Over and over all over the world.
And that pre-supposes that you know which document contains the information you need. If you come across an unfamiliar language construct in someone elses source code, there are about twenty different places you might find the relevant documentation. Once you found it, the documentation is generally quite good, and well maintained. But finding it? Oh boy!
As a for instance, if you do not already know which core document CHECK{} blocks are documented in, try finding it:
P:\test>perldoc CHECK
No documentation found for "CHECK".
P:\test>perldoc /f CHECK
No documentation found for "/f".
No documentation found for "CHECK".
P:\test>perldoc -f CHECK
No documentation for perl function `CHECK' found
P:\test>perldoc -q CHECK
Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq4.pod
How do I verify a credit card checksum?
Get the Business::CreditCard module from CPAN.
Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq8.pod
How do I check whether input is ready on the keyboard?
The easiest way to do this is to read a key in nonblocking mode wi
+th the
Term::ReadKey module from CPAN, passing it an argument of -1 to in
+dicate
not to block:
use Term::ReadKey;
ReadMode('cbreak');
if (defined ($char = ReadKey(-1)) ) {
# input was waiting and it was $char
} else {
# no input was waiting
}
ReadMode('normal'); # restore normal tty sett
+ings
Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq9.pod
How do I check a valid mail address?
You can't, at least, not in real time. Bummer, eh?
Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a h
+uman
[SNIP]
There are many more examples.
Even once converted to html per AS docs, there is still no easy way to find where in the IO::Socket::INET docs the recv call is documented. Or where in the LWP::* suite you should look to find the numeric/text mapping for HTTP error codes.
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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[d/l] |
