we only have three uses at the moment, all of them in code blocks where
they could just as well (or maybe better) be comments. markdown can't do
callouts without another pandoc filter, so we'll turn them into comments
instead.
synapse would've benefited from inline links, but referencing an
external numbered list as plain text (instead of clickable links, like
callout lists had) seems even worse than putting urls into comments as
plain text.
markdown doesn't really have examples as a first-class construct. we'll
keep all examples that are referenced around for now, but all
unreferenced examples turn into invisible anchors. (turning them into
fourth-level headings in their files, as would be necessary for emacs,
removes them from the TOC anyway.)
productname, application, acronym, guilabel, and guibutton were so far
not rendered specially and can go away completely.
replaceable does render differently, but since it was only used twice
and in places where the intent should be clear without the extra markup
it can go as well.
makes sure that program listing tags are separated from their contents
by exactly a newline character. this makes the markdown translation
easier to verify (since no new newlines need to be inserted), and
there's no rendering difference anyway.
markdown cannot represent those links. remove them all now instead of in
each chapter conversion to keep the diff for each chapter small and more
understandable.
conversions were done using https://github.com/pennae/nix-doc-munge
using (probably) rev f34e145 running
nix-doc-munge nixos/**/*.nix
nix-doc-munge --import nixos/**/*.nix
the tool ensures that only changes that could affect the generated
manual *but don't* are committed, other changes require manual review
and are discarded.
the conversion procedure is simple:
- find all things that look like options, ie calls to either `mkOption`
or `lib.mkOption` that take an attrset. remember the attrset as the
option
- for all options, find a `description` attribute who's value is not a
call to `mdDoc` or `lib.mdDoc`
- textually convert the entire value of the attribute to MD with a few
simple regexes (the set from mdize-module.sh)
- if the change produced a change in the manual output, discard
- if the change kept the manual unchanged, add some text to the
description to make sure we've actually found an option. if the
manual changes this time, keep the converted description
this procedure converts 80% of nixos options to markdown. around 2000
options remain to be inspected, but most of those fail the "does not
change the manual output check": currently the MD conversion process
does not faithfully convert docbook tags like <code> and <package>, so
any option using such tags will not be converted at all.
