[Zope3-dev] FWIW: I endorse reStructuredText

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "TS" == Tres Seaver <tseaver@zope.com> writes:

    TS> Are you endorsing adding such markup to each file for
    TS> each-and-every editor out there?  Or had you just forgotten
    TS> that there are other choices :)?

I'm not endorsing anything!

    |  -*- reSTX -*-
    |  vim: let b:current_syntax reSTX
    |  joe: set syntax reSTX (whatever joe would use)

As an aside, I could teach Emacs to recognize any of these bits, but
that's besides the point.

    TS> Filename extensions suck, but they beat having to mangle the
    TS> file contents FBO your editor.  (And don't even start about
    TS> the Emacs local variable thing, which has an abominable
    TS> syntax.)

No arguments there.

    TS> David's position is like one which insists on using '.xml' as
    TS> the suffix for each-and-every file which uses XML markup to
    TS> encode its data: while it may be *true*, it isn't *useful*, to
    TS> say that the file is XML.  The case of resources served over
    TS> the web is worse: some people have to use tools (like IE, for
    TS> instance), which ignore extra metadata like the 'Content-type'
    TS> header of an HTTP request, and just hand the file off to the
    TS> Windows shell module to invoke its filename-extension-only
    TS> braindead handler.

No arguments there.

    TS> +1 for '.rst'.

On the other hand, I now have to teach all my tools, not just my
editor, what kind of files .rst files are:

>>> import mimetypes
>>> mimetypes.guess_type('.rst')
(None, None)

I'm betting that if I clicked on a .rst file with my browser it would
show me a download dialog instead of displaying the human readable
text, too.

"Hmm, Fundamental mode -- but this isn't lisp!"

Since none of these tools know anything about reST files, and since
the format is intended to be human readable plain text, I think .txt
is just fine.

But I'm not endorsing anything <wink>.
-Barry