On 6/26/07, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 11:12:58PM -0700, Trevor Talbot wrote:
> > On 6/25/07, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:

> > >What harm is done if we have 8,000 different syntaxes, if the tools do
> > >seamless conversion between them all?

> > Er, I thought the point of having a human-editable format was to avoid
> > requiring the use of tools.

> What you're missing is that "the tools" in this case means "any
> proplib-using application".  It doesn't matter if you write a boot
> properties list in XML or SCN, it looks the same to proplib internally;
> and, similarly, it can output that list of boot properties in XML or
> SCN, as you like.

But the issue is what happens when there's an existing configuration
file I want to edit.  If it's in one of the 7,999 formats I'm not
comfortable with, I have to use another tool just to get it into a
form where I can edit it.  (And there's still the issue of
transporting comments in this case.)

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.

Proplib provides consistency for developers, but users need consistency too.

> The simple fact that proplib can internalize *and* externalize is one
> major advantage it offers over other parsers traditionally used for
> configuration files.

No argument from me here!