Draft PEP on RSON configuration file format

Alf P. Steinbach alfps at start.no
Tue Mar 2 21:54:20 EST 2010


* Patrick Maupin:
> On Mar 2, 5:36 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
> cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>> You seem to be taking the position that if you start with a config file
>> config.json, it is "too hard to edit", but then by renaming it to
>> config.rson it magically becomes easier to edit. That *is* ludicrous.
> 
> No, but that seems to be the position you keep trying to ascribe to
> me: "Wait a minute... if JSON is too hard to edit, and RSON is a
> *superset* of JSON, that means by definition every JSON file is also a
> valid RSON file.  Since JSON is too hard to manually edit, so is
> RSON."

Just a heads-up: IME it's next to impossible (maybe actually impossible) to 
convince Steven that your position is not the one he ascribes to you. At least 
not without an extremely lengthy debate veering off on multiple similar tangents 
plus some that one would never dream of. So I'd give up on that.

Anyway, I agree with the sentiments expressed by many in this thread that what's 
important is the established "eco-culture", not the editability.

Thus, even though XML isn't all that editable it's what I'd choose by default 
for rich configuration information, regardless of whether some simpler to edit 
alternative existed. Simply because there are so many XML tools out there, and 
people know about XML. It's like MS-DOS once became popular in spite of being 
extremely technically imperfect for its purpose, and then Windows... :-)


Cheers,

- Alf



More information about the Python-list mailing list