[Distutils] toml

[Donald Stufft]

> On Oct 27, 2014, at 4:45 PM, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I liked it because I agree with the TOML author that the YAML spec
> gives rage; YAML seems to be defined as a bunch of things that the end
> user is supposed to think are intuitive, but try understanding and
> correctly parsing the full set of what is allowed... TOML on the other
> hand is short.
> 
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 27 October 2014 19:23, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>> Ugh, I hate TOML. I’m -1 on any of the standards using it, but I also
>>> think the standards should be around data exchange and should just use
>>> JSON and leave front end stuff like that up to the implementations.
>> 
>> I had a quick glance at TOML, and I can't say I was particularly
>> enamoured by it. I don't see that it has any particularly huge
>> benefits over "plain" ini files (if your needs are simple) or YAML
>> (ignoring the over-complicated stuff that nobody actually needs).
>> 
>> +1 on JSON for "internal" format, and tools deciding for themselves on
>> the best user-facing format.
>> 
>> I'm also not sure I see the value of mapping directly to a dict.
>> Surely internal formats should be isolated from the user interface,
>> not exposed directly?
>> Paul

The YAML spec isn’t for end users any more than the various HTTP RFCs
are for end users. The spec is for people implementing a yam parser/encoder
and when implementing a spec the less ambiguity and the more verbose
the spec is, the better.

It’s not a very good argument though, because JSON is the better format
for data exchange and that’s all the standards should be focused on. If
someone wants to make a tool that uses TOML and emits standard metadata
(when that becomes a thing outside of Wheels) more power to them.

---
Donald Stufft
PGP: 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA