Alan McKinnon wrote:
On Tuesday 19 January 2010 00:29:18 Neil Bothwick wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:53:16 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
Your post makes sense until you realise that the use of XML in a
configuration designed to be changed by the user renders the package
virtually unusable. Given a choice between me as a developer struggling
with a config parser versus vast swathes of users dumping the package
because of the same parser, I'd say it's me that has to work harder,
not my users.
If we are truly trying to make Linux more accessible, with things like
the plug and play hal offers, should we even be contemplating editing
config files?
XML is a machine-readable file format that just happens to use ASCII
characters, it is not meant to be modified by a text editor, so if your
program uses XML configuration files, it should include a means of
editing those files that does not include the use of vim.
which almost by definition means you need an xml-information parser on par
with an xml-parser to figure out what the hell the fields mean, then design an
intelligent viewer-editor thingy that lets the user add-delete-change the
information in the xml file. All the while displaying to the user at least
some information about the fields in view. Shaes of .chm anyone?
By the time you've done all that and made the thing semi-usable, you've
expended more effort than if you had written you own xml-parser from scratch.
In C, python and perl. Plus C++ for good measure just to show how clever you
are.
As said before by someone else, hal and everything about it is a classic case
of "second system syndrome". It should be a comp-sci object case :-)
I bet if hal had a easier to alter config file, I could have gotten my
keyboard and mouse to work. Having the config file in xml format would
be fine, IF it works out of the box with no configuring at all. Thing
is, in my case and a few others, it needed a little bit of help to
work. Some figured out how to make it work but my light bulb burned out
and we all know where that ended up.
I suspect that the underlying part of hal works fine. It MAY have
worked fine for me if it was configured properly. The config part seems
to have been at least some of its shortcoming. Take hal, redo the
config file and try again. May work. ;-)
Dale
:-) :-)
