On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:58:12 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:27:57 UTC, Chris wrote:
But JSON is widely used and chances are that people are
already familiar with it. If not, it's easy to learn, there
are loads of resources. 3rd party tools can easily parse it.
And hey, it's not that bad.
Well, many are familiar with JSON, and I use it all the time,
but it is not a good or readable format. It is just something
browsers have builtin, that's the only thing it has going for
it.
XML is a lot worse as regards human readability.
I think not. It is all about familiarity and if the grammar has
been designed for it. I find my own XML _much_ more readable
than JSON. And much easier to eXtend.
If you use a decent XML editor and have a schema for the
grammar then you get a really nice generic editing solution
with auto-completion.
Here is one very real advantage of XML: the ability to embed
standard markup in descriptions and use one "container format"
for all future non-D data.
I think the animosity against XML is misguided.
But if XML is out, then YAML is a good expressive alternative
(that can be translated into XML, so you can use both if you
want to).
JSON is very limiting and not a future proof solution. People
who pick JSON for configuration, probably also pick Php for
their website. ;^)
At the end of the day, all markup, data exchange or description
languages are not easy on the eye. It's a question of "which is
worse", and that's often a question of personal taste.
I'm sure that we would have a similar discussion, if we had YAML,
XML, TOML or whatever. It doesn't really matter. But what does
matter is that we use a well known standardized format.
I think the point to take home is that communication has to work
better between the D core and its (official) satellites.
