Re: a little (folish?) idea

[Weapon of Mass Deduction <blacklist@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

For some reason my last replies didn't come through...

Weapon of Mass Deduction wrote:

> andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > blacklist wrote @ Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:02:47 +0200:
> >
> >
> > > Why not, once DragonFly will create its own ports-system, store the 
> > > port-files in XML? At least for the ports, this is quite reasonable.
> > > This could also be applied to the whole system configuration-file 
> > > concept, but I can figure not everyone would like to see a XML-parser
> > > included in the base system... :P
> >
> >
> >
> > XML is neither very good for humans to process nor for computers.
>
> Why would that be? One who understands HTML would certainly understand
> XML, and is it not true that, for example, many people are ardently 
> hand-coding their webpages? Aren't there also many XML-editors available
> to make life easier in case you really need it?
> XML has been universally accepted, and its succes grows day by day.
> Now I don't see what your point is, so I think you would better state
> some facts before jumping to conclusions.
>
> > YAML is better for humans,
>
> Concluding from the example at its website, I don't see a major 
> improvement. Also, realize XML on its own isn't intented to be 
> human-readable, that's where XSLT comes in. As a matter of fact,
> it would even be possible to have the raw XML-files be transformed
> to YAML, if that would really that human-readable.
>
>  S-lang (lisp) is better for cumputers, e.g.
>
> > So even if there was a problem, XML would not be the solution
> > (unless your intention is to sell us software tools or hardware).
>
> Erm.. *my* intention to sell *you* (plural) software/hardware?
>
> I cannot not see any sign pointing in that direction.
> And, to the point, noone says there is any problem. If the existence
> of a serious problem would be required for anything to be improved,
> the development of DragonFly BSD should be halted immediately...
>
> Still, there are many benefits of XML over plain-text configuration
> storage. For example, it would enable one to centralize settings as
> much as possible, express the relation between the separate 
> configuration files, administer and process configuration settings 
> more effectively, and display the contents in a more elegant
> (or 'human-readable' ;)) and sensible form then the one which is 
> produced by just printing a text-dump in the console.
>
> > Andy