On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, Philip Brown wrote: > > I am trying to point out that none of > > "XML is cool", > "XML is a hot trend right now" > "I havent had as much XML experience as I'd like" > > are valid reasons for selecting XML as the basis for a file format.
I concur completely and I don't think we have specificed any of those as reasons for choosing XML as the format or at least not in any of the e-mails that I have read. > Nor is "well, there's an xml library, why dont we use it?" > There are embedded scheme/java/python/perl libraries too. The argument > doesnt make any more sense for those . No, the exact reason I gave was that a libxml library exists currently in the tree so people that do not already have it can get it just by using the source they would already have. It is a convience reason. In your last e-mail you wanted to have it nice for end users ... right here is a good example of being nice to them. > On the other hand, > "DRI is meant to integrate with XFree86. XFree86 has a standard > configuration file format. We should follow the > 'principle of least surprise', and use the same format they are used > to for X11 configuration" > > DOES seem to make a good deal of sense, when considering the needs of users > as more important than the needs of developers. Two things: 1) Don't kick a gift horse in the mouth. If the users really want something in a certain way are more the happy to do it. 2) The XF86Config file format does what it does very well. It isn't necessarily what we are looking for. It also isn't exactly a library that one can just use. It is a very custom built parser for a very specific purpose. We don't need to re-invent the wheel here. > There are GUI tools for Xfree configuration too, and they have managed to > get along fine without using XML. > If you want a "Library" for config file parsing, cant you just use whatever > the x server itself uses? No - as stated above it is a custom built parser with very specific operating parameters. You can look at it yourself in the XFree86 tree and you will see what I mean. -- //========================================================\\ || D. Hageman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> || \\========================================================// ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See! http://www.vasoftware.com _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
