Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 01:20:34 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@freebsd.org> To: Chris Pepper <pepper@reppep.com> Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: (man page || manpage) => manual page Message-ID: <20020529222034.GD67628@hades.hell.gr> In-Reply-To: <p05111a1bb91affba8a28@[129.85.219.160]> References: <20020529214746.GA67346@hades.hell.gr> <p05111a1bb91affba8a28@[129.85.219.160]>
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On 2002-05-29 18:03 -0400, Chris Pepper wrote: > So this raises a question I've been wondering about. Sorry if > it's a FAQ -- I haven't stumbled across it yet. > > What is the dividing line between entities and tags? I'd > think it would be more XML-ish and reusable to use something like: > > <citerefentry> > <refentrytitle>lame</refentrytitle> > <manvolnum>1</manvolnum> > </citerefentry> > > than "&man.lame.1;". What's the dividing line that falls > between man pages and other tagged items, that makes man an entity > (in all the pages I've looked at so far, anyway)? Reusability. If you're going to write something only once, it probably isn't worth the trouble to make an entity out of it, except perhaps for stylistic reasons (we are not using <citerefentry> directly anywhere else, so we shouldn't use it here either). If the text that the entity substitutes is going to appear at least twice, or more than a few times, using an entity has a few advantages. a) If you change your mind and want to substitute something else, you just change the entity definition. In this sense, entities are much like the #define statements of C. You use them to define `magic' parts of text that are replaced by the SGML normalizer just like #define constants are replaced by the C preprocessor before compiling a C program. b) You don't have to manually repeat stuff, which is error-prone and might also be boring after a while. Most often, the text of an entity is far shorter than the substituted text, and you just feel too lazy to type the replacement text over and over again. So you make an entity out of it, and use that. - Giorgos To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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