From kde-devel Sun May 16 13:05:54 1999 From: Mats Loman Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 13:05:54 +0000 To: kde-devel Subject: Re: Desktop Entry Standard / XML X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=92685959728371 On Sat, 15 May 1999, Andreas Pour wrote: > pbrown@redhat.com wrote: > > > Several people have suggested to me that the new Desktop Entry Standard > > define the on-disk file in XML. What we really care about is the actual > > keys and values, the on-disk format isn't nearly as important. XML would > > give us a clearly defined, hierarchical system (something the current > > ini-like format lacks) which we already have a parser for in Qt 2.0. > > > > The GNOME guys are in favor of "fixing this" as well. They would have to > > go through the same sort of pain as us in switching to this new file > > format, as their on-disk format currently is INI-like as well. > > > > Comments welcome. > > Although this is theoretically nicer, one of the nice things about > KDE configuration files has been you can edit them by hand. Using XML, even > if pretty-printed, is basically going to prevent non-programmers from > editing these files by hand, since XML is significantly more complex that > "key=value". > > You guys may think XML is trivial, but my sister won't :-). > > I'm not saying not to use XML, I'm just making a comment. Personally, I > think as long as you can right click on the kdelnk icon and get a nice > GUI interface to edit it, and this GUI is smart enough to recognize all > entries, that's fine. For that to work, the XML would need to include some > meta-data explaining to the GUI editor what each field is. Perhaps and > "editor-comment" field, as well as an "editor-type" field that can have an > enumerated list of permitted options or an indicator like "path", "string" > or "integer". This way, when a program adds a new configuration field, the > editor can handle it. > > Regards, > > Andreas Pour > > I would vote for XML files for booth configuration files and desktop entries. I see a big benefit in the long run. I think it would make easier to make general configuration programs. Imagine xml file that contains the configuration and annother containing the GUI description. //Mats Loman