Re: Authorship

["der.hans" <ldp-discuss@LuftHans.com>]

Am 08. Jun, 2000 schwäzte Gary Preckshot so:

> Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> 
> >ok, leaving end tags off is BAD, I sent a message saying why.  I've read
> some of the HOWTOs in LinuxDoc format, and I find the lack of end tags
> disturbing.  I also don't think that the ld2db stuff is quite as good as it
> could be.
> 
> I agree with this in spades. There are several very good reasons:
> 
> 1) It's non-standard. It doesn't make sense to embrace a standard and then
> deviate from it.

Is it non-standard? In XML it's quite allowable to use syntax
shortcuts. If it's OK in docbook as well our tools have to be able to
handle it and we can't be claiming it's non-standard. We can, however, say
we think it's in bad taste and highly encourage using docbook the way we
think it should be used.

Personally I would do "<p/>This is a paragraph." if that were valid (I
think that's the way it's done in XML), but if the paragraph were more
than a few lines I would explicitly use both tags. It's the same way I do
control structures in programming. It's often confusing as hell to know
what "{" a "}" belongs to, so I put comments after the "}" noting which
"{" it's closing if things get too confusing :).

> 2) Lack of end tags makes parsers much harder to write. End tags remove
> ambiguity.

I agree, so will try to keep from taking short cuts :).

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
#  der.hans@LuftHans.com   home.pages.de/~lufthans/   www.Opnix.com
# It's up to the reader to make the book interesting.
# An author has only the opportunity to make it uninteresting. - der.hans


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