using haddock markup in Description field

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 23:21 +0100, Henning Thielemann wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 20:03 +0100, Henning Thielemann wrote:
> >> I like to use Haddock markup like bird track (>) and enumerations (*) in
> >> the Description field of a package.
> >
> > Yep,
> >
> >> However I can't get it working, the mentioned markup is simply ignored.
> >
> > Hmm, works for me:
> >
> > Description:
> >        foo
> >        .
> >        > bar
> >        .
> >        * baz
> >
> > And the generated html documentation displays the markup as expected.
> >
> > For some reason we decided on a .cabal file format where blank lines are
> > ignored and one needs '.' on a line to signal a blank line. I'm highly
> > tempted to change that unless someone has a compelling reason.
> 
> Ah, that's the trick. Should be documented. I hoped to read about here:
>   http://www.haskell.org/cabal/release/latest/doc/users-guide/x30.html#general-fields

It is documented a few lines above:

        To get a blank line in a field value, use an indented "."

It could probably be clearer though. I'm happy to accept a patch (darcs
or informal).

Though as I said before I think it'd be better to remove the "." thing
entirely.

Duncan