Re: proplist [was: Importing xmlgrep into base]

[Matthew Mondor <mm_lists%pulsar-zone.net@localhost>]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:33:26 +0200
Nhat Minh Le <nhat.minh.le%huoc.org@localhost> wrote:

> At Sat, 17 Apr 2010 15:38:40 +0400,
> Aleksej Saushev wrote:
> > 
> > Nhat Minh Le <nhat.minh.le%huoc.org@localhost> writes:
> > 
> > > At Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:39:58 +0400,
> > > Aleksej Saushev wrote:
> > >> 
> > >> That it is already imported is a mistake.
> > >> 
> > >> And all this flame is about not making another mistake by importing
> > >> another patched up tool to deal with another one "non-binary format"
> > >> for any kind of data.
> > >
> > > "Patched-up"? By no means are my tools perfect, but since nobody has
> > > bothered to comment, I can only assume there's not much to
> > > say. Though, if you've got something to say, please go ahead and say
> > > it. But please keep it technical. And I would also kindly ask you to
> > > refrain from gratuitously insulting other people's work.
> > 
> > No offense, but you're repeating the same mistake many other writers do.
> > You assume that whatever is done, is ready to become accepted by the world.
> > It isn't so. Instead, anything with insufficient grounds is considered
> > patched up, and the quality of work doesn't matter at all.
> > 
> > [...]
> 
> Please do not make false claims about whatever you think I'm
> assuming. I've never said or implied that my work would be "accepted
> by the world". I just wanted to make clear that whatever the point you
> are trying to make, it has nothing to do with the technical merit or
> quality of my work. That is all. You are of course free to think
> whatever you will of my tools and their relative usefulness.

I'm sorry that this thread has turned out this animated, and this was
not the original intention.  I would advise everyone to please remain
calm and keep the discussion friendly and technical;  I'm aware that
some topics may raise some emotions but the tone of some previous
messages on this thread seemed to exceed comfortable bounds.

In my opinion, noone should be flamed here;  neither is it a
constructive attitude.

I would also like to thank Nhat Minh Le for his SOC work, I myself have
no authority to decide if it's to become part of the base system or
pkgsrc.  I guess that from the examples David Young posted, core can
decide.  As the xmlgrep examples post showed, it also has other
implications than simply grepping property lists, considering how XML
is popular (SOAP RPC servers, XHTML, docbook, SVG, ODF, etc).

Expressing a personal opinion about alternative formats than XML we
like is fine (I myself did in an early post), but this is probably not
the place to start a holy crusade against XML (and especially not
against other people for their different opinions or the work they've
done), IMO.  Especially considering the limited resources of TNF...  We
shouldn't destroy previous work or divide the community.  If some of my
previous posts contributed to add that much oil on the fire, it was
clumsiness on my part, not the intention.

One shouldn't forget also how easy it now is to read a property list in
memory with the current library, no matter its external representation,
for use by C (which also means that even if no alternate format existed
despite another language like Lua eventually being in base, an FFI
layer to the C API could do, even).

As for human editing, I repeat again that OSX provides a hierarchical
property list file editor.  It's probably a good path to follow no
matter the storage format we keep.

And for performance and size, OSX also supports an optional binary
format with a tool provided to convert between the two.  Since we
already have an Apple-inspired solution, we could also follow that
path.  There even exists a BSD licensed implementation of this already
from Jachym Holecek, which could be adopted or adapted.

Thanks,
-- 
Matt