Re: Doc Tasks (was RE: docstrings in Guile!)

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Clark McGrew <mcgrew@ale.physics.sunysb.edu> writes:

> It works just fine for tex, info, and html.
> 
> @macro atestmacro{param}
> This test macro includes \param\.
> @end macro
> @atestmacro{a purple people eater}

Now tell me what this has to do with "the full power of TeX"?

TeX has macros; texinfo has macros; the two have nothing to do with
each other. (I'm talking conceptually; the current implementation in
which all of texinfo is a set of TeX macros is a historical accident.
In retrospect it may have been better to have makeinfo generate TeX
just like it generates info or html.)

Admittedly, DocBook does not have macros, except for entities (which
are parameter-less strings).  Whether you think that is good or bad
depends on how you use DocBook.  The philosophy od DocBook is that
it should express the structure of your document,  If the standard
DocBook element types are insufficient, DocBook has been designed
to be easy to extend and modify.  Alternatively, you can use the
Role attribute to specify an element sub-class.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/