From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,a26758eec3c2e1ad X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-20 09:02:39 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!193.174.75.178!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-stu1.dfn.de!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!nntp.cs.uni-magdeburg.de!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!uni-duisburg.de!not-for-mail From: Georg Bauhaus Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Use of XML for config files Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 16:02:38 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GMUGHDU Message-ID: References: <3D08E539.343A42BF@san.rr.com> <3D0A2686.785D1BAC@san.rr.com> <3D0F53CC.E3CBB193@san.rr.com> <3D0FAA84.ED827CF5@san.rr.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de X-Trace: a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de 1024588958 9429 134.91.4.34 (20 Jun 2002 16:02:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.uni-duisburg.de NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 16:02:38 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.5.8-20010221 ("Blue Water") (UNIX) (HP-UX/B.11.00 (9000/800)) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26495 Date: 2002-06-20T16:02:38+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: : generic : type Private_Type is private; : with function To_String (Item : in Private_Type) return String; : procedure Write_Private I like this (a lot indeed). : Although I gather you are saying you'd be happy if I _only_ had : Write_String, without any generics. No, no, it's nice to have some flexibility for coping with different situations. If there is a notion of standard configuration value types, it seems like a good thing to have corresponding standard operations. Write_Private will add a known way of writing in non-standard situations. It's good to have it as part of the API because maintainers will likely succeed in finding the responsible To_String actual. No per-application names, no guesswork required, a documented way at this end. :> file, or to ... in an XML file. : : Well, yes, we could define a special support for languages in XML. I : don't see how it's worth it, in the Config_File context. I was rather thinking about the difference between children of a section and properties of a section, not about languages in particular, this was just an example. But since properties can be mapped to children (of different specific types actually (in a DOM based implementation of the API)) there is no problem. : I'd like to have one standard file format. You can always add a child : package to implement a non-standard format. I wouldn't mind moving : enough of the body into the private part of the spec to make that : easier. Which parts? AFAICS now, this won't be necessary, at least in the case of DOM. For example, most of the tree related functions are already available. : Well, if you have a "validating XML editor" sitting around, that would : make things easy. I didn't think such things existed. Various. (Actually, (require 'psgml) mode for Emacs (and then turning on xml-mode) is a good start, but of course this is an option for Emacs users only.) -- Georg