Re: Wizards and W3 integration (was: Re: A road map for Oort Gnus)

[Per Abrahamsen]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> Could you tell why?  Basically what I don't understand is how does HTML 
> come into the equation.  That is, why does it make sense to use HTML for 
> such a purpose?

Why use a markup language as glue, or why use HTML as the markup language?

Reasons to use a markup language as glue: 
-----------------------------------------

I'm more interested in the documentation aspects of the saint, than in
the smartness aspect of the saint.  In most cases, I prefer the saint
to tell the user what to do, instead of just doing it.  It doesn't
hurt if the user learn the basic options during setup, so he easier
can change them later.

Markup languages are much better for documentation than Emacs Lisp or
knowledge bases, that is why I prefer a markup language.

Reasons to use HTML as a markup.
--------------------------------

W3 already exists and its forms are based on the same widget library
as customize which made it easier to .  Also, HTML is well known,
making it easier to get people to write saints.  And because of the
url library, everyone can write saints and place them on their
homepage.  For example, Gnus is very popular and has some very
enthusiastic promoters in Germany.  They would most likely create a
German saint for Gnus, and link to it from the existing German Gnus
pages.