Re: syslog config file format poll

A suggestion: if you need anything with more complex structure than
classic syslog's line-per-entry, fixed-order fields, rather than
borrowing a specific implementation's arbitrary format, or rolling
up --- and having to fully and correctly implement and DOCUMENT ---
some new format of your own, go with a well-documented,
well-implemented existing format.

I needed to represent some lightly-structured data for a software
packaging tool I wrote. I started using lua, then got sold on OGDL.
The transition was effortless.

I concur with those saying XML is too ugly to be considered.
If you find yourself craving its heirarchical and extensible
expressiveness, and feel for some reason like the likes of OGDL
aren't good enough, consider s-exprs; they're pretty nearly
isomorphic to XML but way cleaner and less noisy --- and faster and
easier to marshal and unmarshal. Full robust XML parsers ain't
cheap.

Regardless of what you choose, by taking a route like this you get
someone else to handle the syntax documentation, a couple of
illustrations and a dictionary suffice to describe your application.
And if you decide something else is prettier, with this approach
writing translaters to go from one config language to another is
easy.

-Bennett

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