[Ohrrpgce] SVN: pkmnfrk/2428 Breaking the ground on my XML idea. for the time being, I'm not hacking

[Mike Caron]

Well, i'm going to be home about 11:30 EST. Want to meet on IRC to
discuss it? I have an idea which should satisfy everyone, and is too
long to type on a cell phone :)

On 11/5/08, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 01:41:23PM -0500, Mike Caron wrote:
>> James Paige wrote:
>> >On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 12:03:28AM -0800, subversion at HamsterRepublic.com
>> >wrote:
>> >>pkmnfrk
>> >>2008-11-05 00:03:27 -0800 (Wed, 05 Nov 2008)
>> >>467
>> >>Breaking the ground on my XML idea. for the time being, I'm not hacking
>> >>the OHR directly. Instead, I'm going to work on a separate "test"
>> >> program.
>> >>
>> >>The main reason is because using libxml adds three DLLs as dependencies,
>> >>
>> >>and I'm going to try and make them all static libraries, or at least
>> >> roll
>> >>them into one DLL.
>> >>
>> >>I assume this is not such a big deal on Linux, since Linux users are
>> >> used
>> >>to having to apt-get a bunch of stuff before trying new things out,
>> >>right? :P
>> >
>> >I was reading up on the differences between XML, YAML and JSON. I really
>> >liked the minimalism of those other formats. XML really is astonishingly
>> >bulky.
>>
>> Truthfully, I'd never heard of YAML until this very moment. However, I
>> glossed over the spec to get an idea of it, and here are my thoughts,
>> and why I like XML.
>>
>> YAML: It uses indentation for block levels. As I'm sure I've expressed
>> before, I dislike this, due to the possibility of screwing it up by
>> having the wrong tab settings as the last guy. Indentation is good,
>> delineation by indentation is bad, IMO. It also prevents me from copying
>> one block from any random place and popping it in wherever I want
>> without fixing the indentation. (altogether, this is also why I
>> personally can't stand python)
>
> Interesting. That never bothered me about python, because I was already
> used to re-indenting when copying-and-pasting in every other language I
> have worked in. (just because python is the only language that enforces
> indentation, doesn't mean I don't religiously indent in every other
> language)
>
>> JSON: If you look at the example page
>> (http://www.json.org/example.html), then you'll notice something
>> disconcerting. Barring the last example (a servlet definition), the XML
>> versions of all those examples are more readable. It may not be as
>> concise, but it... I dunno, it looks better to me. Also, the fact that I
>> can't see at a glance which brace matches which block bugs me, slightly.
>
> Ah, I think I spot a big reason why we disagree about this. For you, an
> important goal of using XML is the human-readability, right?
>
> For me, human readability iss nice-to-have, but it isn't a big deal. I
> can see myself looking at the text of a data file to verify that it
> serialized correctly, but I wouldn't dream of hand editing or
> copying-and-pasting unless I had no other choice.
>
> What is cool about XML to me is the fact that it can store hierarchical
> tree-like data, the fact that it can store variable length lists of
> arbitrary objects, and the fact that new data members can be easily
> inserted and old data will just get the defaults.
>
> ...Byt other formats fith the above description just fine. I could even
> make a binary format that had all those features.
>
>> XML: Yes, XML is the bulkiest of the lot. But, it's the most mature
>> format as well. And, lots of tool support is available. But, the thing
>> that really sells me on XML is that I could, in theory, write an XSLT
>> stylesheet, attach it to my textbox document, and get a preview of every
>> textbox in my game, for example. Or, also in theory, I could embed every
>> data lump in one document (if I ever decided that was necessary or a
>> good idea).
>
> If we are talking XML as an import/export format, I can't find any
> argument against it, but as an internal format, I don't care for it.
>
>> Lastly, for the purposes of OHR development, XML is the only format in
>> the bunch that has a library included with the compiler. For the other
>> formats, I'd have to translate their headers into FB, which may or may
>> not be impossible (it likely is possible, but it's still a lot of work).
>
> Yeah, I do see that XML headers come with FreeBasic.
>
> The inclusion of another dll dependency isn't a dealbreaker, but I am
> not excited about it. I do notice that libxml2.dll + iconv.dll >
> (SLD.dll + SDl_mixer.dll) * 2
>
> ---
> James Paige
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>


-- 
Mike Caron
Tale of the Cave
http://taleotc.com