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----- Original Message ---- |
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> From: pk <peterk2@××××××××.se> |
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> BRM wrote: |
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> > The point of the UI is that you ought not care what goes where, unless you are |
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> debugging the UI or the program itself. |
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> > While a UI is important; a good UI is key. |
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> And a plain text editor is, imo, a good UI; everybody knows how to use |
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> it. Why bring in another extra (translation) layer? |
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That's only good if you always store all options - every possible combination, etc. - at all times. |
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Unfortunately, that's almost never the case. |
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Thus you need to be able to know how to create a good working configuration. |
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This requires having a tool the user can use to edit the configuration, with the tool |
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providing access to the options you otherwise would not know about that also |
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protects you by helping to ensure the configuration is in the valid format. Of course, |
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the tool also has to get upgraded with the changes in the program - so that it knows |
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how to build correct configurations. |
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This is where XML does somewhat shine for configurations - you can get by with a little |
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less by enabling the tool to use XML validation on the configuration file; then even if your |
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tool falls a little behind, it can still validate the configuration file against the DTD/RNG/Schema. |
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But it also means that you MUST have a tool. |
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Ben |
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