Re: Plans for 2.8 - GNOME Managed Language Services?

On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 12:00, Murray Cumming wrote:

> By the way, Gtk# uses a different .defs file format and scanner, because
> they really really wanted it to be in XML format.

Well, we use XML because at the time I started the binding, the defs
still didn't include properties, signals, and some other stuff I'm
forgetting now.  I figured that if I had to write parsing scripts for
this information anyway, I might as well put it in an easier format to
read on the generation step.  That saved me from having to also write an
s-expr parser for my code generator.  Plus it allowed Gtk# to serve as a
stress test for mono's System.Xml implementation.  ;-)

I know there are historical reasons for why the defs are stored as
s-exprs, but I believe XML is a better format for the API from the
standpoint that virtually every language known to man at this point has
an XML parser.  I also totally understand that for bindings already
using the defs it would be a big waste of effort to change to XML in
their code generators, just as it would be a waste of mine to switch to
s-exprs.

-- 
Mike Kestner <[email protected]>

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