"Edward S. Marshall" <esm@logic.net> writes:
> I might have missed a discussion somewhere along the line, so forgive me
> if I'm asking a silly question, but why not simply use an XML-based
> configuration file format? expat-lite is already available to anything
> that needs it, and the general availability of expat and libxml would
> seem to make it an obvious choice.
>
> It just seems like inventing a new file format for the sake of inventing
> a new file format. Surely some reuse of an existing parser (XML or
> other) would make sense here?
Because these files are going to be edited by humans. Humans always
make syntax mistakes when editing XML. (Well, of course, *you and I*
don't make mistakes, but we're not humans, we're programmers.)
Note that we're not inventing a new config syntax. We're using what
is probably the most widespread syntax in the world -- the format of
Windows configuration files. It's intuitive to understand, easy to
write correct syntax by hand, and (voilą!) we already have a parser,
thanks to Brane.
-K
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Received on Wed Mar 13 01:26:13 2002