On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Always Learning centos@u62.u22.net wrote:
On Thu, 2014-03-20 at 17:18 -0400, m.roth@5-cent.us 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