list separator in config entries

[Andreas Hartmetz]

2007/10/8, Andreas Hartmetz <ahartmetz at gmail.com>:
> 2007/10/8, Andreas Pakulat <apaku at gmx.de>:
> > On 08.10.07 08:09:26, Thomas Braxton wrote:
> > > On 10/8/07, Oswald Buddenhagen <ossi at kde.org> wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 01:22:02PM +0200, Andreas Hartmetz wrote:
> > > > > 2007/10/8, Oswald Buddenhagen <ossi at kde.org>:
> > > > > > the question is at which point lists are serialized and therefore
> > > > > > through how many escaping passes they go.
> > > > > >
> > > > > Ahem yes, I missed that.
> > > > > You are arguing for another refactoring of KConfig here which I assume
> > > > > was not your intention.
> > > > >
> > > > whoops. ;)
> > > >
> > > > > I agree that we need to fix things right,
> > > > >
> > > > exactly.
> > > > if another refactoring is the price to pay, we need to bite the bullet.
> > > > note that this is only internal stuff, so it doesn't necessarily mean a
> > > > further delay.
> > > >
> > > > > For the record: The refactoring would consist of moving list handling
> > > > > into the backend(s)
> > > > >
> > > > yes.
> > > > given that the windows registry can handle numerical values and blobs,
> > > > too, all of the type handling should move to the backends - the api
> > > > would only know qvariant, which would allow arbitrarily complex nesting
> > > > and leave complete freedom to the backend.
> > > > to support backends that don't provide arbitrary binary storage (in
> > > > particular, text-oriented backends like ini), a serialization
> > > > class/namespace would be provided to share code.
> > > > serializers for gui classes need to be somehow external ... hmmm,
> > > > actually, this is a generic problem if custom data structures should be
> > > > supported.
> > > >
> > > > > > assuming that the spec is implemented only by people who know
> > > > > > anything about working escaping is pretty naive.
> > > > > >
> > > > > Programmers OTOH should know what they are doing.
> > > > >
> > > > the key is "should". particularly in the lesser known almost-one-man
> > > > projects the know-how is often missing. it's incredible how much crap is
> > > > out there. so it is crucial not to leave *anything* to interpretation in
> > > > a spec.
> > >
> > > couldn't KConfigGroup just escape the escape chars, and if you want to
> > > change KEntryMap, I don't really see a problem, but can't that wait until
> > > after 4.0? It's not like we have any other backends right now.
> >
> > Uhm, we can't change the API after 4.0, so removing the custom-separator
> > method is needed to be done _now_.
> >
> Fortunately, a random sampling of about 25 of lxr.kde.org's 170 hits
> for "readEntry" didn't turn up one single user of custom separators.
> It's totally silly, and API users seem to have realized it :)
>
s/readEntry/readListEntry