Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.misc > #11762

Pandoc universal document format convertor is 10 years old

Show all headers | View raw

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/pandoc-discuss/0rutNJAVKoc


Pandoc started out as a small practice project to mess 
around with Haskell.  After a while it became capable enough 
for me to use in my own work. I released it under an 
open-source license because I used other people's 
open-source software, and because there was no reason not 
to.  But I didn't expect it would ever be used much by 
anyone but me. 

When I started working on pandoc, the Haskell ecosystem was 
small.  There was no central database of packages, and no 
cabal or stack tool for managing dependencies. I had to 
write my own libraries for dealing with zip archives 
(zip-archive) and highlighting syntax (highlighting-kate). 
Things have come a long way since then. 

Because I was just a beginner in Haskell when I began the 
project, and key libraries like text didn't yet exist, there 
are a number of things about the project's design that are 
less than ideal.  If I were starting over, I'd use Text 
everywhere instead of String.  I'd also use a lot more 
newtypes, and I'd use free monads or type classes so that 
all of the readers and writers could be used outside of IO. 
I'd use a data structure that allowed attributes to be 
attached uniformly to all elements.  I think we'll 
ultimately need to make these changes to move forward, but 
they're not simple changes to make in a 34k line code base. 

Back to comp.misc | Previous | Next | Find similar

Thread

Pandoc universal document format convertor is 10 years old RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-08-12 13:29 -0400

csiph-web