Re: configuration files

[James Frazer <jfrazer@xxxxxxxx>]

Heh, well I don't know about you, but I very rarely write entire config 
files from scratch.  A few changes here or there wouldn't be a big deal :-)

Most config files stay pretty static IMO.  When you install your base 
system (or your fav app) there's usually a default or sample config file 
-- often a few changes is all that is needed to get things up and 
running.  I've just always found it somewhat of a nuisance -- cryptic 
syntax -- different syntax for different files -- sometimes the examples 
suck and are not very intuitive.

Ideally I think XML-config would probably be auto-generated or 
abstracted in someway -- as to leave hand typing to a last resort.  Most 
 config files probably wouldn't result in too many levels of 
complexity.  I also think it would be easier to write a generalized 
frontend to change any settings -- it's impossible to write a frontend 
to do this now, as different config-files often have such major 
differences in syntax.

Kind of funny though, I'm pretty sure I used the same argument (too much 
typing) against you back during the XML-in-packages discussion.  I knew 
that one would come back to bite me at some point.


--James



Dave Leimbach wrote:

<snip>

> Here is my vote for I really hope we never use XML for configuration
> files.  Its a real pain in the butt to type all thos <> </> tags.  For 
> sufficiently deep XML trees its also error for humans to correctly
> type the correct ending tag with a matching begin tag.  
>
> I use XML a lot... I like it for things like DocBook but I sure don't
> want to edit it by hand.