From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17776 invoked by uid 1002); 5 May 2003 00:09:00 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 218 invoked from network); 5 May 2003 00:09:00 -0000 From: Wesley Leggette To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org In-Reply-To: <200305041625.35794.powers.161@osu.edu> References: <1052064144.1708.3.camel@cyr.kaylix.net> <20030504164928.GN5148@lucien.dreaming> <200305041625.35794.powers.161@osu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Organization: Message-Id: <1052092735.7913.20.camel@cyr.kaylix.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.1- Date: 04 May 2003 18:58:56 -0500 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Init replacement X-Archives-Salt: 2d92a699-8552-4b1f-b8be-81fa3561c977 X-Archives-Hash: 32073857edcead5b8771029a49970c88 On Sun, 2003-05-04 at 15:25, Evan Powers wrote: > On Sunday 04 May 2003 12:49 pm, Björn Lindström wrote: > > SGML (and thus HTML) was never originally intended to be human > > readable/hackable. The same goes for XML. It is designed to be > > easily _parsed_, not easily _read_. > > I think you've made an excellent point here, one people should not quickly > overlook. Though I'll take a slightly different perspective. > > XML isn't intrinsically harder to read than any other general-purpose > expressive system. When humans say that it is, what they're really doing is > complaining that they cannot use domain-specific sub-syntaxes. (Or rather, > that they are discouraged from doing so.) > > Example. Mathematical notation isn't /necessary/, people could just write "a > quantity named y equals the indefinite integral of f, a function of a > quantity named x, times the derivative of the quantity x". But they never do, > instead preferring to write "y=", a certain squiggle, and "f(x)dx". > > Does anyone actually think a human is ever going to (voluntarily) write an > equation of even moderate complexity in MathML? > > My point is this: > > Starting and stopping most services is a task that can be broken down into > execing or fork-execing another program with a particular environment, > particular command line arguments, and particular input and output > redirections. Shell is a domain-specific language particularly suited to > expressing these operations. > > I won't say that XML has no place, or that script snippets shouldn't be > embedded within an XML document, or that the script a human writes shouldn't > be immediately translated into its XML equivalent. I am saying, however, that > humans will insist on writing in the shell domain-specific language where it > is more convenient for them to do so, and that forcing them to do otherwise > in the name of anything is a long-term design mistake. > > Which I suppose is a quite strong statement to make after all. > > Evan > > -- > gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list Yes, you are absolutly right about people wanting to use a domain-specific language when it is most convienent. It would be best to incorporate bash scripts in any XML style system. XML is probably best for metadata (like dependancies and such),. but the system should allow people to use shell scripts when any tricky commands have to be issued to start something up. -- Wesley Leggette -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list