Here are some first drafts of a couple XML examples based on the
_zip & _find files.  While I haven't done it, it seems to me that
it wouldn't be difficult to use these files to generate equivalent
versions of the existing _zip & _find files.

These files becomes more readable in an XML viewer that can collapse
elements (e.g. emacs?, gxmlviewer, IBM's XML viewer).  Though several
of these have some difficulty showing the help text in a useful
manor.

Some of the features in this draft:

    *) The ability to specify language for descriptions/explanations
    using the xml:lang attribute.

    *) The ability to add documentation from the man page of zip and
    zsh.  The _arguments specific flag documentation, and help on the
    zip options.

    *) Ability to specify other completions, such as for the ZIPOPT
    environment variable.  Though this hasn't really been thought
    out, not quite sure how the completion function would be
    generated based on this format.

Some things missing that I wanted to add

    *) Ability to reuse exclusion groups. Make a definition and then
    reuse it for all the options.

    *) Reuse a set of flags with a small set of edits. Not all of
    zip's flags can be used with ZIPOPT, there should be an easy way
    to take a set of flags an delete/add some.

    *) More of the options (!+=- etc.) that can be placed in the
    optspecs.

    *) Ability to specify compdef options.

    *) Show equivalent flags.


Some of the things I like about this format: *) Appropriate
documentation can be inserted at the place where you need it.
Whether it be zsh-specific or command-specific.  Also, it leaves open
additional sources of documentation such as the file's author (i.e.
comments.)

    *) I think it is straight forward to convert this file into
    zsh scripts.  (Though, it might take a little XSL work. ) The
    structure of the xml is strongly tied to the _arguments format,
    Also it is tied to some extent to the completion file format,
    though I haven't done survey of common file structures, if there
    is such a thing.

    *) There is a mechanism for handling non-declarative parts (i.e.
    code blocks).

Some of the things I don't like about this format:

    *) The xml is about 14 times the size of the shell version in the
    case of _zip.

    *) Missing stuff to handle repeated information, such as
    exclusion lists.

    *) More difficult to comprehend what is happening without an XML
    editor.  And even with that, pertinent information takes some
    work to find.


My original goal was to make it easier to create new functions.  So
the next thing I would like to do is markup the usage output from a
command.  I'd like that format to be easy to modify by hand, and then
taking that hand edit and transform it into the format I've shown for
_find and _zip.  I'll try to send that out next week.

Does this seem useful, yet?  Any suggestions for making it better?

-FR.


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