On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Always Learning <centos@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2014-03-20 at 17:18 -0400, m.roth@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > > > On the other hand, what justifiable reason was there for the
> massively
> > > > increased complexity of grub2? And why do all configuration files
> > > > suddenly *desperately* need to be xml?
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Always Learning wrote:
>
> > > Because misguided fools believe XML is wundervol and they don't want
> > > simplicity of use.
>
> On Sat, 2014-03-22 at 13:54 +1300, Cliff Pratt wrote:
>
> > The advantages of XML are that it is a common, mature standard, it is
> > easily parseable by humans and computers.
>
> Nothing is easier and simpler than
>
> [any-section]
> parameter1=value1
> parameter2=value2
>
> Compare to XML (= the WEB PAGE 'new idea'), plain text is common, well
> established and a significantly more mature standard. Plain text is
> easier to read with vastly improve clarity, compared to XML, and no line
> indentations or angular brackets required.
>
> I note your reference to XML being "common, mature standard" omits any
> praise for XML and also omits calling it "good" :-)
> <http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos>
>
That text format is simple. Too simple. If you have multiple similar
sub-sections you have to use some ad-hoc construction. For example if you
require sub entries with eg a default sub-section and a per-user
sub-section then the simple example doesn't work, or at least it is
rendered a lot less readable. It doesn't nest.
YAML is quite a good if you insist on a text type format, without the
complexity of JSON.
But back to XML. It is parseable using all sorts of libraries and on lots
of platforms. We have a number of apps that use XML for configuration data.
It is easy for the programmers to knock up a page to edit this and the app
itself can easily parse the results.
But I'm sorry, I must admit that there was an element of tongue in cheek in
my reference to XML's advantages. I've been reading and writing it for
years, so I speak it fluently, at least in the possibly limited set of
usages that we have.
Cheers,
Cliff
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