Re: [PATCH v3 2/4] Documentation/atomic_ops.txt: convert to ReST markup

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Mon Nov 28 2016 - 06:56:53 EST


On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 01:16:45PM +0200, Jani Nikula wrote:
> Using rst we can produce decent HTML pages, and make them available at
> [1], in context. You don't have to read that, but it will be a lot more
> discoverable for other people, another important quality of good
> documentation. And perhaps you don't have to tell people to go read it
> so much.
>
> [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

*sigh*, basically if I have to touch a browser its broken.

> > Very much agreed, once a file is no longer readable with less or the
> > text editor of your choice, it as good doesn't exist at all. So I very
> > much worry about RST even supporting such heavy markup that the end
> > result is unreadable.
>
> The goal is to have the best of both worlds, keeping it pretty much
> plain text, but adding just enough consistency in formatting that you
> can generate other formats out of it. We don't have to and we shouldn't
> go overboard with the markup.
>
> Arguably you could call rst a "coding style" for plain text. We have
> pretty uniform C code, I don't think it's unreasonable to have a little
> bit of consistency in the plain text. And really, it's not much we're
> asking.

With some decidedly daft conventions though; see my email to Mauro.