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Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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>> The only way to be sure of that is to write your own replacement for HAL. |
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>> ;) |
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>> |
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> |
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> That might not be a bad idea.... |
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> |
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> I never agreed with the implementation of hal. An abstract layer sounds good, |
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> but why must it abstract ALL hardware? Most software already knows what type |
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> of devices it is going to use, so that software should either do it's own |
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> abstraction, or a utility library should do it, but be limited to what devices |
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> it deals with. |
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> |
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> Most devices fall into one of two groups: storage and I/O. Auto-mounters do |
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> not care about your keyboard, whereas X needs to know about your monitor, |
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> card, keyboard, mouse. Why does hal try and abstract both? Seems silly to me. |
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> |
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> One could also argue that the developer's state of mind is reflected in the |
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> chosen method of configuration - xml files. This just defies all |
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> understanding. Apart from the fact that real-world xml is almost unreadable, |
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> the conditions that make xml useful are simply not present in hal... |
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> |
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> xml works well when you have system A talking to system B and neither A nor B |
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> (nor user C) know in advance exactly what the other is. They might not even |
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> know much about the data schema being used, so that metadata is in the xml. |
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> This is so completely not the case with hal on a local machine, that it defies |
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> description why the dev thought it might be useful. |
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I can't argue with any of that, which is why I decided to quote it in |
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full - it's worth |
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repeating. |
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It seems xml is the fashion with certain programmers. Totally |
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unnecessary. :( |
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Be lucky, |
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|
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Neil |
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http://www.neiljw.com |