Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] [DBUS] net.ekiga.history

[Damien Ciabrini <Damien Ciabrini sophia inria fr>]

On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 21:15 +0100, Julien PUYDT wrote:
> Damien Ciabrini a écrit :
> > I don't know how difficult it is to encode the result into XML, but I
> > fail to see the robustness of the XML approach compared to the hastable
> > approach I proposed some days ago. I mean, from the user standpoint, the
> > result encoded into a hashtable would be something like:
> > 
> > [date='2006/03/21 13:41:27', name='Helpful Tester', duration='3:14:15',
> > endreason=4, software='Ekiga 3.14159']
> 
> Well, I did ask for a more explicit example, and you didn't give it 
> until now, so I could hardly compare with your proposition. :-)
> 
arghh... :)

> > What would be the advantage of an XML-encoded result ? I you have to
> > evolve the interface, you either:
> >   1. add a new field into the XML result. This can be implemented by
> > adding a new key in the hashtable-approach
> >   2. replace some field with another in the XML result. This evolution
> > should be avoid with both XML or hashtable approach, as it would break
> > existing bindings to ekiga.
> 
> Both our approaches are very simple to encode. The difference is in 
> decoding :
> 1) XML parsers are very current, and available in a wide variety of 
> languages (just for C, I can name GMarkup, libxml2 and expat), while I 
> have no idea how to parse your hashtable short of writing a new parser 
> by hand ;
> 2) there is a clear and definite convention how to encode strings for 
> use in a XML stanza (GMarkup has g_markup_escape_text for use with 
> g_str_printf, libxml2 has its own more complete system)... while we 
> would have to define precisely how to cope with strings containing (for 
> example) quotes in the hashtable case.
OK, thanks for pointing out this kind of corner case.

> > I certainly have missed some important point... Anyway, note that my
> > remark is relevant only if returning a hastable instead of a piece of
> > XML is less difficult to implement :)
> 
> As I said, returning a hashtable or a XML stanza is very easy... the 
> problem lies in getting them as a result and knowing what to do with it.

No more objections, I'm convinced.

-- 
Damien Ciabrini