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Re: Bloat: XML, GUI design (was: Re: [OT] Gnome configuration (was: Re: Congrats! [gnome font rendering]))



tomas pospisek <tpo2@sourcepole.ch> writes:

> On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Eduard Bloch wrote:
>
>> Fine. And do you really think, XML is perfectly human readable for
>> manual editing? I doubt. And if it is not meant for manual editing, what
>> is the point of making such bloat around of few values?
>
> I do not want to comment your other points (I very well _may_ agree). XML
> _is_ easy to edit, it just takes the right editor, that hides the <""=>
> eye-brain-flow-distruptors away and visualizes the tree structure. That
> means no ascii editor.
> *t

  XML is definitely for interoperability between applications.
  But I strongly agree with Eduard: as long as such files are
  managed by programs, there is nothing to disagree with.

  When it comes to ask users to edit them to change configuration,
  it does not respect Unix philosophy of keeping configuration
  files human editable.

  XML is fine for documentation because the pain of managing tags
  is negligible compared to the text you write within.
  XML for editable configuration files is a pain because you have far
  more tags than configuration text.

  Cheers, 

-- 
Jérôme Marant

http://marant.org



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