Thomas Hruska wrote: > IMO, JSON is far better than XML. Google has long since moved away from > XML as their primary data exchange format. >
I have heard of JSON before but never really looked at it closely. I will take another look. The web site takes an interesting approach of describing the grammar using simple pictures, and I was able to understand its structure in about 5 seconds. > What really needs to happen is every programmer needs to agree on a > consistent way to easily migrate application data from all applications. > That way a user can simply up and move their application data between > computers. > This is why I mentioned using XML (or another open interchange format) in the user's profile. Whether using Unix or Windows, the idea of a "profile" is well-defined. Burying stuff in the registry or with the program data just makes things more difficult. If all programs used this method it would be easy to transfer applications. A lot of software does: however, I have found that more than just user settings, a lot of programs store core data in the registry. This is ok for some applications: some can run regardless of what is in the registry, and some will repair its contents automatically or manually but easily (e.g. 7-zip will repair file associations if you tell it to). Personally, I am in favor of applications that do not touch the registry at all. Eclipse, my IDE of choice, is completely self-contained in its little sandbox of a directory. There are no user settings: workspaces contain this metadata, and are easily migrated. -- John Gaughan http://www.jtgprogramming.org/
