On 6/28/07, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 02:46:43PM -0700, Trevor Talbot wrote:
> >
> > I don't recall anyone mentioning it explicitly, but XML itself has a
> > technical advantage of being a cross-platform format already, and
> > plist specifically has a public DTD.  Any XML processing tools are
> > thus capable of working with plists, without needing to use proplib.
>
> Oh, piffle.  That's true in the same vacuous way as the statement "ASCII
> is a cross-platform format": it doesn't do you any particular good if you
> have to edit _this particular_ ASCII file.

I meant that in the sense of putting things together with existing
tools, not in the sense of some third-party other-platform thing
magically understanding NetBSD conf files.  You have to do some work
either way, but at least you don't have to go modify the tools to use
proplib first.

> Don't see why?  I'm guessing you don't have to administer both OS X and
> Solaris server systems: they both have XML configuration files for most
> network services, both use public DTDs, and that's as far as it goes: have
> fun remembering which way you have to write that configuration file _this_
> time...

I don't; I work with OS X but not Solaris, and don't often work with
plists anyway.  I can see how this would be a problem though.