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