Tons of questions. And some patches

[Frans Englich]

On Saturday 24 January 2004 15:36, Simon Hausmann wrote:
> On Saturday 24 January 2004 15:27, Frans Englich wrote:
> > Below is a pile of questions and tiny patches. If it was a bad idea
> > grouping it all in one mail I will split it up in smaller ones(or some
> > other better way).
> >
> > * AFAICT there is clear advantages of having desktop files in a XML
> > format. Why is it not so? Speed issues?
>
> The most obvious advantage I see with the .ini style .desktop files is
> that they're human read- and editable. With xml it's easy to forget closing
> a tag or the like, making parsers bail out and stop processing.

Exactly, and that's a good thing :) .desktop files is something you write once 
and then it's done. We want the parsers to bail out in case the .desktop is 
wrong - that's a great method to clean up bugs. For example, if only XHTML 
strict existed people would write correct code, and things would be a lot 
easier.
Anyway, to me it looks like a reinvention of the wheel - for example fd.o's 
desktop validator could easily be solved with a DTD. The desktop entry 
standard also invents a whole new syntax, which XML easily covers, AFAICT.


			Frans