Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP ??: Critical News Reporting

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 22:57:13 +0100 Jan Kundrát <jkt@g.o> wrote:
| On Tuesday 01 of November 2005 19:25 Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| > On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 17:22:29 +0100 Jan Kundrát <jkt@g.o>
| > wrote:
| > | What's wrong with XML format similar to the one that is used for
| > | our GLSAs?
| >
| > 1. Portage does not handle XML. Portage will not handle XML in the
| > near future.
| 
| How will it handle GLSAs then? [1]

gentoolkit != portage.

| > 5. XML is merely adding another problem to the one we have already.
| 
| Could you please explain?

Parsing XML is complicated. Writing XML is complicated. I put together
a complete working client that can show news items in the plain text
format proposed -- it took me fifteen minutes to write. I threw
together a script which can be called after a cron sync that mails news
items to root in under a minute. There is no way this could be done if
XML were being used -- any task involving news items would be a major
chore.

| > There is no XML in this GLEP for the same reasons that there is no
| > Java, CORBA, EJBs, web services, on demand computing initiatives or
| > invisible pink unicorns.
| 
| I'm not sure if our GLSAs use PHP, ODBC, ASP, SOAP, computer grids or 
| invisible pink unicorns while I'm pretty sure they do use XML.

And? Why repeat previous mistakes?

| > I have an eselect module which can read these news files. The whole
| > thing is about the same size as the DTD would need to be for an
| > XML-based solution. I have a parser written for the format in
| > question. The whole thing is smaller than the initialisation code
| > for an off the shelf XML parser.
| 
| Great. Why haven't you just used existing code from `glsa-check`, BTW?

Because merely figuring out the XML DTD takes longer than it does to
write an entire client for plain text news items.

| > It's not a question of "what's wrong with XML?". It's a question of
| > "what advantage would we gain by strapping a giant flapping wet
| > kipper to a bicycle?".
| 
| Or (a little bit rephrased) "why should we stick with consistent file 
| formats".

Uh, you'd have to invent a load of new XML DTD stuff for this anyway.
So you're not using a consistent file format at all, you're just using
a consistent unnecessary layer in the middle, which as a side effect
makes your files incompatible with every standard Unix tool ever
written.

Using XML does not magically make things compatible. XML is just a
layer in the middle. Any tool processing XML files still has to worry
about however the DTD in question works.

You think XML magically makes things compatible? Then I suggest you
write a GuieXML to Docbook conversion tool, and see how many thousand
lines of XSLT it takes. All XML does is move the conversion and parsing
problems to a different, more complex level.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Vim, Shell tools, Fluxbox, Cron)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm