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: 103376,80b3e504140e89fd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-20 07:33:28 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!skates!not-for-mail From: Stephen Leake Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Config_Files proposal Date: 20 Jun 2002 10:19:16 -0400 Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (skates.gsfc.nasa.gov) Message-ID: References: <4519e058.0206190708.2ef205e4@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.gsfc.nasa.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: skates.gsfc.nasa.gov 1024583216 12195 128.183.220.71 (20 Jun 2002 14:26:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.gsfc.nasa.gov NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Jun 2002 14:26:56 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26487 Date: 2002-06-20T14:26:56+00:00 List-Id: "Marin David Condic" writes: > XML is significantly better than some of the other formats suggested here > for one factor: Other tools will be able to make use of it. If it comes to > displaying an initialization file or using the data in any other way, you > gain the ability to make them work in entirely new contexts without having > to do some form of data conversion. True. > All other things being equal, gaining an XML parser in the process > would be A Good Thing. Yes, but I think you'll agree that all other things are not equal today. And since I am _not_ proposing to write an XML parser, but only to reuse an existing one, we are not "gaining" anything; those parsers are already there. > Imagine if one day when everything is sunshine and rainbows and > pastel unicorns and Ada has some kind of standard means of > displaying web page stuff, your initialization file XML data slides > right in there. XML is not "web page stuff"; Netscape doesn't know how to display it. It has to be processed into HTML first (unless I am really missing something). It's just as easy to process a Config_File into HTML. If the Config_File standard catches on, it would be reasonable to define and implement a standard translation to XML and HTML and whatever else comes along. > Imagine that once the tools are there to handle XML on input and > output how many other things might be built on top of Grace that > could leverage this capability. Yes, that would be nice. But it is way outside the scope of the Config_File mandate. Even if we had better XML tools in Grace today, I think I would not use XML for Config_Files. It just doesn't meet the requirements; hand-editing is important, and too hard in XML. > IOW, use this as an excuse to build an XML DOM & SAX. (I'd like to > see an OO implementation of this using tagged records and closely > following the W3C DOM model, despite the very nice non-OO > implementation done by XML/Ada.) I don't think we need an excuse for that :). -- -- Stephe