[racket] Scribble in continue

   (define (path . body) (b (tt "\"" body "\"")))

and with scribble syntax:

   (define @path{@body} @b{@tt{"@body"}})


Question on scribble syntax: isn't @path{@body} read as (path body) ?  
What syntax gives (path . body) ?  I'm having trouble getting a . in there.

Thanks,
Dave

On 10/01/2010 08:14 AM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
> Three minutes ago, Stephen De Gabrielle wrote:
>    
>> I meant the @ syntax just like your example, but I was thinking of
>> the @syntax being entered by the user via the browser
>>      
> That's a really good idea, and if you do that we can definitely use
> it.  We've been looking for a while for some wiki solution, and IMO
> the scribble syntax has a good balance between being convenient enough
> to be considered almost markdown, yet formal enough to not suffer from
> various markdown diseases (you can see these when you get to some
> cornder cases, and the syntax becomes very complex, or just see any
> wikipedia source -- the convenient lightweight wiki language has long
> ago turned into a massive pile of ad-hoc syntaxes and templates, which
> you can only use by copy+pasting examples if you want to keep your
> sanity.)
>
> However, the actual documentation system is way to heavy for a quick
> wiki blurb -- most definitely not something that people can learn in
> the 10 seconds they'll allocate to glancing at the help blurb when
> they type a quick comment.  That's in addition to it being slow enough
> that you don't want to use it to render pages dynamically.  So IMO
> going in this direction (using the syntax only) is a good idea.
>
> Note that the Scribble syntax has a convenient shortcut for quoted
> (and quasiquoted and unquoted etc) forms.  For example,
>
>    @`html{@head{@title{...}}
>           @body{...}}
>
> will work fine.
>
> But there is a major problem with xexprs.  The whole quoted/unquoted
> context makes it very difficult to know where you currently are.  As
> an example, at some point in the past the PLT web pages had a bunch
> of:
>
>    <quote>&nbsp;</quote>
>
> because 'nbsp was used deep inside some already quoted xexpr.
>
> Another problem is that xexprs are picky about the kind of data that
> goes into them.  You can't just have a list somewhere, and that makes
> you run into all kinds of complex situations -- one common byproduct
> is using `apply append' too much; anothert common result is returning
> `(span ...) because the result of a function is expected to be a
> single xexpr, or returning `((p "blah")) because it's expected to be
> multiple expressions.
>
>
> I solved both of these problems by making a (yet another) new kind of
> xml representation, but the new thing is how it's used.  Instead of
> abusing quotes, it's all just functions.  So instead of
>
>    `(foo ([blah "blah"]) "bar")
>
> you use
>
>    (foo blah: "blah" "bar")
>
> (I used `keywords:' to keep them separate from racket keywords.)  The
> main thing here is that `foo' is a function -- so when you nest them
> you nest function calls, which means that you never need to remember
> if it's quoted or not.  Even better, when you need to change
> something, you can define new functions that behave just the same --
> so instead of doing new markup which is awkward to use:
>
>    (define (path . body) `(b (tt "\"" , at body "\"")))
>    (define my-page `(html ... (body "Here is " ,(path "x.rkt") ...)))
>
> you just make up a new function:
>
>    (define (path . body) (b (apply tt `("\"" , at body "\""))))
>    (define my-page (html ... (body "Here is " (path "x.rkt") ...)))
>
> and to avoid the list problem, I made it so if there's a list, its
> contents is rendered, so there's no need to do any flattening:
>
>    (define (path . body) (b (tt "\"" body "\"")))
>    (define my-page (html ... (body "Here is " (path "x.rkt") ...)))
>
> and with scribble syntax:
>
>    (define @path{@body} @b{@tt{"@body"}})
>    (define my-page @html{ ... @body{Here is @path{x.rkt} ...}})
>
> You can see all of this in the web page sources -- in
> collects/meta/web.  It's close to being useful as a library, the main
> thing that I need to do is document it.  If you do a wiki based on
> this, it will definitely be a strong motivator to finally doing it.
>
>