[Haskell-cafe] haddock as a markdown preprocessor

[Yitzchak Gale]

David Menendez wrote:
>  Markdown is not really a presentation format.
> It's an authoring format

Its primary design goal is to be easy to read, not easy to
parse. That's why I consider it a presentation format,

Anyway, it's not suitable for use as API markup.
The whole point is that you want to add
metadata indicating how various pieces of your
content relate to various pieces of Haskell syntax.
You would have to add special markup, in
which case you would get, well, Haddock.

Or you could extend markdown's embedded HTML
facility to accept other tags for that purpose -
but then your content would be less readable than
Haddock, not more readable. (Though that
is the direction taken by C#.)

I'm happy with Haddock's input syntax. It's
quite readable, and simple enough. And
it's similar to many other API markup systems
for other languages, so many people feel
comfortable with it right from the start.

Regards,
Yitz