On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 11:45:21AM -0700, Trevor Talbot wrote:
> On 6/26/07, Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com> wrote:
> >On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Trevor Talbot wrote:
> 
> >> It doesn't matter that the particular application can read any format,
> >> or that proplib provides the ability to write any format (it's
> >> unlikely all the proplib users will expose that), if I still have to
> >> jump through hoops just to make simple configuration changes.
> 
> >All that's necessary for you to be able to edit in your preferred
> >format is for *one* proplib-using application to expose the ability to
> >convert between different formats.  Then you run "plistedit --format
> >xyzzy /etc/foobar.conf" instead of "vi /etc/foobar.conf".  Yes, this is
> >jumping through a hoop, but I think it's an easy jump.
> 
> Right, but once you're at this stage of using a format-converting tool
> to edit your supposedly human-friendly no-tools-required configuration
> files, you've completely lost the benefits of having so many formats.
> Might as well just pick one format and let the editing tool do all the
> work, since nothing else benefits from it.

	Why use the format converting tool to _edit_?  It seems to me that,
assuming proplib externalization uses the same format that a file was
read in with, you could do something like this _once_:
	propcat --outformat xyzzy foo.conf > foo.conf.new
	mv foo.conf.new foo.conf
and then use whatever you want to edit it.

eric