Mailing List Archive

Who maintains the POD spec?
Over the years there's been a couple of suggestions of features that
people want adding to POD, that have gone back and forth and fizzled
out mostly on the observation that it isn't really clear who would be
responsible for updating/adding code to the various POD formatters or
other consumers. I'd like to get to the bottom of this sometime, as I
feel there's a steadily-growing list of "things that would be nice"
that we don't have in POD.

I don't want to turn this thread into a discussion on the features
themselves, but rather to work out *who* are the people to really get
into that chat. I would like to be in a position where we can
confidently go about adding some new features and abilities to the
format where currently it is lacking.

Can anyone suggest who some important stake-holders or otherwise
interested parties might be? Or at least, where we might find out?

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
Re: Who maintains the POD spec? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 02:02:13PM +0100, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:
> Over the years there's been a couple of suggestions of features that
> people want adding to POD, that have gone back and forth and fizzled
> out mostly on the observation that it isn't really clear who would be
> responsible for updating/adding code to the various POD formatters or
> other consumers. I'd like to get to the bottom of this sometime, as I
> feel there's a steadily-growing list of "things that would be nice"
> that we don't have in POD.
>
> I don't want to turn this thread into a discussion on the features
> themselves, but rather to work out *who* are the people to really get
> into that chat. I would like to be in a position where we can
> confidently go about adding some new features and abilities to the
> format where currently it is lacking.
>
> Can anyone suggest who some important stake-holders or otherwise
> interested parties might be? Or at least, where we might find out?

The pod-people:

https://lists.perl.org/list/pod-people.html

There was some discussion of the image proposal there:

https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.pod-people/2020/10/msg2110.html

The list has generally been very quiet.

Tony
Re: Who maintains the POD spec? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 23:40:30 +1000
Tony Cook <tony@develop-help.com> wrote:

> The pod-people:
>
> https://lists.perl.org/list/pod-people.html
>
> There was some discussion of the image proposal there:
>
> https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.pod-people/2020/10/msg2110.html
>
> The list has generally been very quiet.

The list is dead and the spec is hosted in our repository. The most
recent addition to POD (=head5 and =head6) was done as a normal
pull-request: https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/18047

At this point, I think it's pretty clear that the POD spec is maintained
by P5P.
Re: Who maintains the POD spec? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 14:02:13 +0100
"Paul \"LeoNerd\" Evans" <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> wrote:

> Over the years there's been a couple of suggestions of features that
> people want adding to POD, that have gone back and forth and fizzled
> out mostly on the observation that it isn't really clear who would be
> responsible for updating/adding code to the various POD formatters or
> other consumers.

I'm the one who made the most recent big proposals[1][2]. The reason why
they "fizzled out" was a combination of a several things:

- The pre-RFCs were submitted around the time when the RFC process was
changed. Originally, pre-RFCs were supposed to be reviewed and approved
or rejected by the PSC, but apparently you now have to ask them to do
that.

- There was some opposition to the tables proposal.

- I got busy and I had less time and energy to pursue the proposal.

[1] - Pre-RFC: images in Pod: https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2021/11/msg261905.html
[2] - Pre-RFC: tables in Pod: https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2021/11/msg261904.html
Re: Who maintains the POD spec? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 23:40:30 +1000
Tony Cook <tony@develop-help.com> wrote:

> The pod-people:
>
> https://lists.perl.org/list/pod-people.html

Alrighty; well I'll subscribe and see how I get on.

--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/