Re: @Doc considered harmful

[Radek Hnilica]

> > I am totally lost, I was trying this:
> > 
> > @Doc @Text @Begin
> >   @InitialLanguage { Czech }
> >   @InitialFont { TimesCE Base 11p }
> 
> *sigh* - this just reaffirms my opinion that the @Doc alias was a bad
> idea.  Newcomers are being tricked by it all the time.
> 
> @Doc is just a (in)convenience alias for 
> 
>     @Document
>     //

I found this due to serching the right place for
>       @InitialLanguage { Czech }
>       @InitialFont { TimesCE Base 11p }
I hoped that these was right but putted in wrong place.


> This is of course documented in the User's Guide, but the amount of
> (pedagogical) troubles @Doc causes on the ongoing basis for newbies
> far outweights the small gain in terseness, IMO.

What is gain of @Doc ?

Maybe for newcommers helps some really rich template and their description.
For first contact that will be somethink like "Hello world" program in C.


> @Doc hides the (in)famouse // between the layout symbol invocation
> (@Document, @Report, @Book etc) and the body of the document.

If it is only one reason for @Doc, then it is superfluous.

> Also when people want to use options to @Document they also need to
> learn that @Doc should be expanded into @Document // and that options
> comes in between.
> 
> IOW, @Doc considered harmful.

Yoy say it.

Thanks for explantation.  Now I feel more clever.

-- 
Radek Hnilica <Radek at Balga dot CZ>
http://www.balga.cz/hnilica
===========================

No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back.
                                                Turkish proverb