Re: Not all bindings are defined in cfg_ioncore.lua

On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 05:28:05PM -0400, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Aug 2007 16:57:08 -0400 Etan Reisner <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> ER> Also, the fact that the bindings are in lua is unrelated to the
> ER> difficulty in editing them for normal people, lua is designed to be
> ER> used for configuration services and as such can be made to look
> ER> rather config-file-like.
>
> IMO Lua is not a good configuration language no matter what.  Neither
> are Perl, shell, etc.  When the author punts the software configurations
> to code, either the users learn to code that language, or they walk
> away.  If you have a better Lua syntax, that's great, but remember it
> has to be better than a regular configuration file too, because that's
> what end users expect.

What is a 'regular configuration file'? INI syntax? resolv.conf syntax?
xorg.conf syntax? xml? What 'standard' configuration files do users deal
with at this point? (Or really ever?)

And I should point out that lua can handle 'standard':

    variable = value
    variable = value

syntax just fine. So you wouldn't even need to know it was lua in the simple case.

> ER> Actually this doesn't need to touch Tuomo at all it can be entirely with a
> ER> runtime script which reads your simplified binding file and makes the
> ER> right lua calls.
>
> To be widely useful, this syntax should be part of the Ion3 release and
> supported.  Unofficial is OK by me but end users will not find it by
> default, and they are the ones that need this functionality the most.
> So I'd rather write something Tuomo will include in Ion3.  If you
> disagree, feel free to write and support the script, I am perfectly OK
> with that.

I think you seriously overestimate the appeal of something like ion3 with
the sort of people who would need such a simplified config file syntax.

And I might very well consider attempting a simplified syntax parsing
script. Though seeing as how I have been comfortably using the lua
configuration stuff for a long time now I am not at all sure I am going to
be able to come up with useful 'names' for things people want to do.

> Ted

	-Etan