XML Desktop config files (was: Re: Tons of questions. And some patches

[Dr. Juergen Pfennig]

On Saturday 24 January 2004 15:27, Frans Englich wrote:

> * AFAICT there is clear advantages of having desktop files in a XML format.
> Why is it not so? Speed issues?

I believe that KDE on the Company desktop would have to cooperate with popular 
configuration management tools. In this sense it would be an advantage to use 
XML configuration files.

I am currently working on a KConfigINIBackEnd rewrite. If this would be 
welcome, I could also support additional line terminations for MAC or 
Windows, UTF-8/Base64 encoding and a hook for XML. The parser would be able 
to detect XML files and delegate their interpretation to some new code.

The XML code could use QT's SAX parser. Unfortunately this is somewhat slower 
then the current INI-style format. But XML could be kept optional - using the 
traditional style the new parser would not be slower. A config file in XML 
could look like (ask me for a shema or DTD):

<?xml .....>
<kdeconfig version="1">
   <group name="xyz" options="i">
      <entry key="hello" options="d" value="alle meine entlein"/>
      <entry key="one" locale="xx_xx" value="1"/>
   </group>
   <group name="binary data example">
      <entry key ="bin" base64="fkdjflkdfjdlkfjdjlfjjf"/>
   </group>
</kdeconfig>

Is anybody interested?
Yours Jürgen