Re: proplist [was: Importing xmlgrep into base]

["Martin S. Weber" <Ephaeton%gmx.net@localhost>]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 11:40:12PM -0400, Matthew Mondor wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:49:28 -0400
> "Martin S. Weber" <Ephaeton%gmx.net@localhost> wrote:
> 
> > Which really makes one wonder why proplib uses a half-baked 
> > XML format anyways. Pity s-exp weren't used back then :)
> 
> I prefer S-EXP to XML myself (or even JSON if for such simple data), (...)

don't get me wrong. I didn't want to state a specific preference. I think
you missed the part which I failed to stress to make it obvious what I was
talking about. It was the "half-baked". As we have learned/seen, what
proplib digests isn't XML. It tries hard to make it look like it, but you're
not guarantueed to take advantage of XML tools and have something that proplib
can digest again.

Having a half-baked half-implementation of a standard (as ugly as it might
be) is not very netbsd'ish IMO ("clean design first"). It makes people
expect the wrong things.

About my O: Yes I personally would rather edit s-exp than XML, but that's
generally not what we should have to do anyways. I liked Matthews suggestion
to have translators to different, even user-digestable formats, but that was
shot down. And trying to find a correct format is probably going to cause
havoc anyways.

Although the unix way (tm) is probably to have a simple text format (i.e.
not half or full XML), so that you can script its editing if you have to.
Which somewhat brings us back to xmlsed if it can digest and spit out
something that proplib can swallow. If not, another case in point that
proplib is not using the correct format.

All I really wanted to say is: Choose a format, make sure you can script
editing it _if users might have to do it_ because that's what's right, amen.
WHAT you choose --- I leave THAT flamewar^Winsightful technical discussion
up to you.

-Martin