On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 01:25:48AM -0600, D. Hageman wrote: > On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Sven Luther wrote: > > > On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 06:04:19PM -0600, D. Hageman wrote: > > > > > > I think you misunderstand. We aren't replacing the XF86Config file here. > > > This is for DRI specific driver settings with capabilities extending to > > > having special options for individual programs if need be. > > > > > > Now if I am mistaken and you did understand ... > > > > > > Your argument is bogus. You can't claim that every XML file format leads > > > to unreadable files. Now, if you have a good *technical* reasons why we > > > shouldn't use XML - I would love to hear them. > > > > > > Couple of good reasons to use XML: > > > > > > *) Parser with validation capabilites already written. > > > *) More and more utilities are using it ... fontconfig for example. > > > *) bindings for all major languages. > > > *) A copy of libxml already exists in the tree if a person doesn't already > > > have it. > > > *) Extensible. > > > *) It can be edited with any text editor. > > > > Another disadvantage is that parsing is so damn slow. > > > Technical argument - sweet! The parsing is so damn slow as compared to > ... what? Is this with big documents or small documents? Do adding > attributes to a tag slow it down even more? If you validate it when you > load it up what performance cost does it incur?
Just my experience for when file-roller (part of gnome) upgrades its configuration, it takes minutes on a Atlhon 1700+, but i admit, the configuration file-roller manages are, if not big, at least there are many of them. I guess the information would be less for a dri configuration parser, so time spent may well be negligible, but that would be for the people defining the configuration to say. It is just one point to take in account when chosing, and i notice you only give advantages, without citing any disadvantages, which is not an honest evaluation. And anyway, you don't really cite techincal reasons, you just say the code is already there, and many people use it. The only techincal point you cite is that it is extensible. The fact that it is easy to edit maybe false though, as it is not easily readable. Also what ever worried me about the XML stuff, is the fact that it may be searching for dtds (i think that is the name of them) on a random site on the web, which may have security implications, but maybe not in our case. > The thing about an argument like this is that we need to have some > actual numbers before it holds any weight. Something to compare it to ... > what alternative do you propose that would be faster? Are we talking > seconds, minutes, hours ... what? You get my point. Well, as said, it is minutes for big files and seconds for small files, i think it is ok, a good comparison wouyld be to test how long it takes to read the XF86Config file, which i guess is of similar complexity to what we are speaking here, or maybe a bit less, and measure it. But given the type of structure, a XML document is more verbose and thus bigger than anything else, unless you compress it, so you loose either in size or in computation time. That said, i will not be writing the code, so it is ok to use XML for me, it is just that if you want to go into technical discutions, then you should also point the negative side, not only the good side. Friendly, Sven Luther ------------------------------------------------------- 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
