Re: LibXML2 Indentation

[Chipzz <chipzz ULYSSIS Org>]

On 30 Apr 2003, Michael Meeks wrote:

> From: Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>
> Subject: Re: LibXML2 Indentation
>
>
> Random, reprehensible flaming of valued maintainer aside:
>
> On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 12:16, Ali Akcaagac wrote:
> > Have you ever tried to manually change a LibXML2 generated config or
> > preferences file which has a linelength of 20000 chars and more ?
> > I'm not talking about one XML file here (which I could change
> > easily) I am more refering to hundrets if not thousands of them.
> > Mainly in my GNOME and .gconf dirs.
>
> 	Why are you trying to edit thousands of xml files mainly inside your
> .gconf dirs ?

You may not want to edit them, but suppose you (or a bug in a program)
somehow screwed up your configuration. Then you could do:

mv .gconf .gconf-old
gnome-session &
diff -ur .gconf-old .gconf

and see what went wrong (which settings are actually different).
THAT is an advantage of human-readable formats, not that you can edit
them. But since gconf doesn't use indentation, everything gets put on
one line, and this is essentially 100% useless. At which point you
might just as well use a binary format, because it doesn't matter any-
way.
Having gconf indent its files may lead to easier bug-reporting, and
not having to blow away your entire configuration because some program
screwed up.

Havoc, please? :)

Chipzz AKA
Jan Van Buggenhout
-- 

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                 UNIX isn't dead - It just smells funny
                           Chipzz ULYSSIS Org
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