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