#lang scribble/doc
@(require "common.ss")

@title[#:tag "end"]{Conclusion}

Much about Scribble's design seems obvious: the idea that documents
should be programs, the choice of core structures for a document, and
the use of HTML and @|latex| as back-end targets. Other engineering
details seem more likely to be useful to future tool designers: the
rationale and mechanics of the @lit["@"] notation, the split between
surface parsing and (relatively ad hoc) ASCII decoding, and the way
that PLT Scheme documentation is distributed and installed along with
its libraries.

More significantly, we see Scribble as a demonstration of language
extensibility in PLT Scheme and, in particular, how that extensibility
goes beyond S-expressions and traditional Lisp-style macros. Many
programming environments have been created, and many documentation
tools have been written; few documentation tools automatically apply
to themselves within a programming environment as a result of the way
that the tool is constructed. DrScheme's online help, in contrast,
automatically works on Scribble documents, connecting uses of
functions and syntax to documentation in the Scribble manual.
Programmers are free to evolve PLT Scheme as a programming language,
and the documentation system can keep up.

@'nbsp

To install an HTML version of this document where Scheme and Scribble
identifiers are hyperlinked to their documentation:

@itemize{

 @item{Install PLT Scheme v3.99.x from

       @verbatim[#:indent 2]{http://pre.plt-scheme.org/installers/}}

 @item{Start DrScheme, enter the program

        @code-block{
          #lang scheme
          (require (planet mflatt/scribble-paper))
        }

      and click @onscreen{Run}. Running the program installs the paper
      and directs your browser to the starting page. To view the
      document source, click @onscreen{Check Syntax} and right-click
      on @scheme[mflatt/scribble-paper] to open its source.}

}