Config_Files proposal

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

I've updated the requirements on my web page:

http://users.erols.com/leakstan/Stephe/Ada/Config_Files/config_files.html

Note that it moved into its own directory, and I did not preserve the
requirement numbers from the last version. I think I've captured the
discussion we've had here.

I've also posted an example implementation using Glib.XML. It does
_not_ implement all of the API requirements (in particular the search
path features and comments are not there); I'm focusing on file format
issues at the moment. Since Glib.XML only supports String, this
implementation does not use Wide_String. There is a test driver also,
giving examples of how the API is used. If you want to compile it
yourself, you'll need to get Glib.XML from the GtkAda distribution at
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/.

Please comment on the spec, or anything else :).

Now I'll do an implemenation using the Java properties file format, to
compare the two.

If someone wants, they can do an implementation for the Windows ini
format, or some other format. But I think Windows ini is less useful
than the Java properties; the Java format supports multiple levels of
key heirarchy. And I think the other formats are more confusing to
edit and parse.

-- 
-- Stephe