Re: Documentation (was Re: [Chicken-users] How to use prelude?)

[Alejandro Forero Cuervo]

> So why not xml at the end?  At least as the canonical format.

Because wiki format is easier for humans to work with.

I know there are editors for XML, but I don't think they can compare
with the ease of use of typing wiki-syntax in one's favorite text
editor.  Since, as you point out, one can convert from wiki-format to
XML and back, I don't see much gain in storing things inside the
Subversion repository in XML.  Things live “svn diff” would break.

I guess the reason to use wiki instead of XML is the same reason to
store programs in Scheme (and Java, C, Perl, Python, Haskell, etc.)
code rather than XML as their canonical form.

I think the canonical format should be the one that is easier for
humans to work with (since (1) we expect humans to work on this a lot
and (2) we can easily convert to formats that machines can work with).

> This had the added advantage, that the tagset to be used and the
> wiki syntax are independent decisions to make.

If you choose to store everything in XML and then let people convert
to wiki, edit and convert back to XML, you still need your wiki format
to reflect the semantics of your document.  Sure, the specific names
of tags can be different, but that is also true if you make wiki your
canonical format: you can always convert to XML and transform it to a
different schema.  So I fail to see what the advantage is.

Alejo.
http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/