[Doc-SIG] verse construct (was Re: [Docutils-develop] Parsing oddness)

[will]

On Fri, 10 May 2002, Moore, Paul wrote:
> 
> Again, it's a case of being aware of your target application. Not many
> people quote poetry in technical documentation.

I do.  This might sound odd, but sometimes I like writing little haiku 
snippets in because the documentation is tedious to write and this makes 
it a bit more exciting for me (the documenter) and other folks (the 
readers).  It also gets across the fact that I'm slightly insane and they 
treat the code and documentation accordingly.

I find a lot of this discussion really interesting.  Most of it starts off
with "why do we need xxx?  no one will use it." as opposed to "hey--i need
xxx for these purposes and StructuredText fits my needs like building a
house out of figgy newtons."

I know most of us are seasoned developers and have lots of experience--but
surely we don't think we've cornered the market on all experience.  From
reading the reStructuredText specification and listening to David respond
to many of the responses to it, I believe reStructuredText is a very well
thought out markup syntax that definitely meets the requirements of its
mission statement as stated and worked through however many months ago.

Currently I use happydoc for my ool docs and AFT for my regular
documentation.  But I loathe StructuredText--it's like an unruly
step-child.  I very much look forward to happydoc supporting
reStructuredText and if they don't get around to it when I do my next
massive documentation overhaul, I may just add it in myself.  When that
happens, I'm definitely switching over.

That's my soapbox.

/will