Stefan Merten wrote:
first of all I'd like to apologize if this is off-topic on this list.
Not really off-topic here, but there are two Docutils-specific lists also: <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/docutils-users> for usage questions, and <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/docutils-develop> for developers. Recent archives are also available at <http://gmane.org>. This list is more general and it has a greater readership.
I don't know whether you already know, but reStructuredText is mentioned on
Yes, it's a good article. A few details could be corrected, but nothing major.
I saw it there, read the specification and some more - and I'm absolutely delighted :-) !!
Glad you like it.
* Is there a Perl implementation already? Does anybody plan such a beast?
Mark Nodine <nodine@somerset.sps.mot.com> is working on a Perl implementation of the reStructuredText parser. He hasn't released any code yet, though.
* Is there a Emacs mode already?
Not yet. There are a few functions in tools/editors/emacs/restructuredtext.el, available from CVS or the snapshot (<http://docutils.sf.net/docutils-snapshot.tgz>).
Particularly it there `font-lock' support for reStructuredText documents available?
No. It's an interesting idea, although I'm not sure how it would work.
If no such thing is available I could give it a try.
Please do!
* Are there transformation tools from OpenOffice format to reStructuredText?
There is work being done on OpenOffice.org XML *writers*, but nothing to my knowledge the other way.
For SDF lately I created a suite of XSLT style sheets which transform the `styles.xml' and `content.xml' contained in `.sxw' and `.sxc' to SDF. Though this involves some post processing by hand it is *much* easier than anything I did before.
Sounds like a good approach. I've heard of people setting up semi-automated systems to assist with conversion.
Of course I'd like to see this for reStructuredText as well. If no-one did this until know, I could rewrite my XSLT scripts a bit to support reStructuredText.
Such code would be welcome.
* Is there a transformation for Docutils Document Tree documents in XML to a reStructuredText source form? Or following PEP 258: Is there a writer for reStructuredText?
There has been some discussion about a generic to-reStructuredText conversion system, perhaps a Docutils "Writer", but no implementation yet.
* Are there plans to support embedded code in reStructuredText documents?
I believe Mark Nodine's Perl implementation has it. There are notes about at <http://docutils.sf.net/spec/notes.html#misc-exec>. Such a feature is inherently dangerous though, and there have to be safeguards in place to prevent reStructuredText/Docutils being used as a vector for viruses & trojans.
* Are there writers for plain text and/or manual pages?
Not that I know of. I recall some discussion, but nothing concrete.
Finally I'd like to draw your attention to
Looks useful, but templating systems are plentiful.
One thing I particularly liked with SDF is the feature to embed SDF or other stuff in anything which supports comments. This way you were able to embed for instance POD documentation in a C++ file. One of the nice features is, that it rearranges the embedded code allowing you to write your documentation at the place of the definition and nonetheless get every piece of documentation at the right place in the final document.
Sounds like "literate programming". Do you have a link to a description of how SDF accomplishes this rearranging?
In the free software project I started lately [http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/mamo/] I created a plug-in for the Template Toolkit which exactly does this sort of gathering of snippets of documentation from an arbitrary source file ... Thinking reStructuredText and Docutils it might qualify as the input part of a reader.
I don't understand the implications. Can you describe this for us? -- David Goodger http://starship.python.net/~goodger Programmer/sysadmin for hire: http://starship.python.net/~goodger/cv