On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 15:55:21 -0800
Alex Perez <[email protected]> wrote:
> cga wrote:
> > Peter Dembinski wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 10:50:35AM -0800, Alex Perez wrote:
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>> I should have read the previous post more carefully. All my
> >>>> divagations
> >>>> were about switching from proplist format to XML-based format of
> >>>> configuration files.
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps /I/ am the one who misunderstood the previous post, because I
> >>> thought it was about *documentation*. Was I incorrect?
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> heh :)
> >>
> >> That's my opinion:
> >> . DocBook is good for technical documentation,
> >> . PropLists are good for storing configuration info.
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >>
> >
> > What I had in mind - perhaps mistakenly - was that configuration files
> > in the oss world were gradually being converted to some standard
> > xml-based dialect(s).
>
> No, this is absolutely false, IMHO.
>
> >
> > Here's what happened to me when I installed Debian Sarge with the wmaker
> > cherry on top: started wprefs to add a couple of favorites to my menus
> > and wprefs said - oh no you don't..! your menu files (read conf file)
> > are in the *wrong* format.. So I poke around a bit and eventually I find
> > that wmakerconf is not so fussy and lets you convert you menu files to
> > the "other" format.. But then guess what.. you lose the Debian menu
> > (yes.. the one that's regularly updated each time you use the Debian
> > packaging system to add or remove apps from the system..!).
> > So apparently just for wmaker there's not one but at least two different
> > proprietory formats just for the menus..
>
> You have a fairly large misunderstanding of the problem with the two
> formats. They are both plist based formats. The error you are referring
> to is a result of (I think) the transition to UTF8 (Unicode) format
> plist files, which is an encoding issue, and not any change in the
> actual plist spec or anything silly like that. Does this make a bit more
> sense now?
err, the reason this happens in debian is because the default root menu is NOT a
Proplist menu (/etc/X11/WindowMaker/menu.hook) and you only have read access
to that menu. WPrefs does allow you to convert the menu, (it will really create a new one)
you can then add your own applications and you can also add debians app menu
(result of running update-menus) by adding the "Sample Submenu" called "Debian Menu"
i hope that clears the Root menu dilema :-)
>
> XML is not easily human-readable. It wasn't designed to be. INI files
> and plist files, on the other hand, were designed to be. XML is also
> over-used and abused, put to work doing things it was never designed to
> do nor very well suited to do. Parsing plist files is amazingly simple.
> parsing XML is not, and requires large libraries and unnecessary
> dependencies.
>
> > I'm not saying xml is necessarily the solution to the wild variety of
> > formats of conf files in the linux (*nix?) world.. but since gnome/gtk
> > appear to have converted to this new standard - at least from what I see
> > when I grep the /etc directory on this new system - I thought I'd ask..
>
> Since when has GNOME/GTK become the authority on the best configuration
> file format? IMHO, the effort required to transition to an XML based
> config file format far outweights any benefits (which may or may not
> even exist). Simply stated, the pay off is not worth the investment in
> time and effort.
> >
> > As to Docbook .. we're all agreed.. No questions asked :-)
> Glad to hear it. It's an excellent format.
>
> > oh and what's Proplists/libproplist? couldn't find a wiki.. couldn't
> > find any doc on any of my systems either..?
>
> plist/proplists are the format of the config file in windowmaker. They
> were originally (AFAIK) devised by NeXT, and used by GNUstep also. To a
> limited extent, they are still used by Apple, but they have moved to a
> (really gross, IMHO) XML-based plist format which is laughably unreadable.
>
> Cheers,
> Alex Perez
>
> _______________________________________________
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> ARCHIVE: https://windowmaker.org/lists/archive/wm-user/
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