Re: proplist [was: Importing xmlgrep into base]

[Matthew Mondor <mm_lists%pulsar-zone.net@localhost>]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:21:45 +0200
Adam Hoka <adam.hoka%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

> Wow, this is actually uglier than XML.
> 
> FYI one one is using lisp or obscure languages like it, so
> why support an obscure data format nobody is using?
> Im pretty sure that we could export to brainfuck too, but why would we?

IMO, the list not only is cleaner to read, but less redundant and
easier to parse (even in C).  As for BF, it's a toy that merits no
comparison against a language as powerful as CL (for which there also
exists a standard, BTW), but I assume that was unnecessary sarcasm.  I
can agree that CL is not as widely used as some other languages, even
if this is not technical-merit related.

But it's not because "people use foo" that everyone must restrict
themselves to using foo, especially when it's open source software or a
personal project, where another tool may well suit better than foo.
In any case, I'm not trying to convince anyone to switch to another
language (had you read the whole thread, I agree that the XML-like
syntax should remain the official text format, but I think that there
also should be a binary format for size and performance).

The issue was that of optional tools to support other formats suitable
for various scripting languages (including JSON) and possibly a more
human-readable format for editing.  But my recent conclusion is that
it's easy enough to write that we probably don't need this in the base
system, afterall.  As for human editing, we probably should eventually
work on a curses proplist hierarchical editor similar to what OSX
provides (that's where the proplib(3) library was inspired from,
afterall)...
-- 
Matt