Around 12 o'clock on Jan 22, Markus Kuhn wrote:
> I strongly agree. XML is an abdomination and practically all people who > think that XML is the solution to their problem have neither understood > XML nor their problem. While XML does currently enjoy perhaps too much popularity, I submit that this case may well fit the model. I have one application that needs to read and understand the full content of the font configuration file, for that the current Xft config file syntax is sufficient. Howver, on top of that, I'm gaining many separate applications that need to read *and write* the file. Many of these needn't understand the entire semantics of the file but all of them need to make sure that the resulting file can still be read by the font configuration library while making changes to parts that they do understand. My alternative to XML is to build configuration file editing capabilities into the font configuration library. That would take significantly more work while at the same time limiting applications to a C interface. One requirement would be to preserve the original formatting and comments of the configuration file; the current parser discards that information while XML does it automatically. I don't find the XML syntax that objectionable for something I expect to edit only once or twice during system configuration; less experienced users will never see the format and will instead take advantage of higher level tools than emacs (or perhaps just some new e-lisp code customized for font configuration :-). Keith Packard XFree86 Core Team Compaq Cambridge Research Lab _______________________________________________ Fonts mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
