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Dear Lord in heaven, who can possibly prefer the XML version? That's hideous!

by wtbob 12y ago

quesera 12y ago
XML parsers prefer the XML version. :) Less glibly, humans never have to deal with it. Data is serialized and deserialized, typically in binary format. It exports to XML merely as a convenience. And critically, XML can be typed properly for all ObjC/Cocoa types (sometimes with characteristic XML awkwardness). That XML is wrongly typed, due to the ambiguous source input. JSON would have similar problems. Correct beats pretty, in this case.
- FranOntanaya 12y ago
  > Less glibly, humans never have to deal with it As long as it works, unless we categorize programmers debugging XML issues as non-human drones.
  - Alphasite_ 12y ago
    And that's why we have list editor.
  - Alphasite_ 12y ago
    And that's why we have plist editor.
- wtbob 12y ago
  > XML parsers prefer the XML version. Well yeah, but an XML parser would also have no problem with '<tag name="p"><chardata><char>T</char><char>h</char><char>i</char><char>s</char><whitespace type="space" /><char>i</char><char>s</char><whitespace type="space" /><char>i</char><char>n</char><char>a</char><char>n</char><char>e</char><punctuation type="full-stop" display-char="." /></tag>', but that would be completely insane. > Less glibly, humans never have to deal with it. […] It exports to XML merely as a convenience. For…humans, no? > And critically, XML can be typed It looks like the plist supported types too, although I don't know for certain. At least, the numbers weren't quoted in the plist. > JSON would have similar problems. Would it? '"2" !== 2', IIRC. Of course, my preferred syntax would be: (dict (david great) (array (1 2 3 4))) if one wanted to treat numbers as text and: (dict (david great) (array ([int]1 [int]2 [int]3 [int]4))) if one wanted to indicate that they are ASCII decimal-encoded integers or: (dict (david great) (array ([bin-int]|AQ==| [bin-int]|Ag==| [bin-int]|AW==| [bin-int]|BA==|))) if one wished to use binary encoding using network-transfer order, but I am clearly insane. Not nearly as insane as whoever came up with that XML abomination, though.
  - yawaramin 12y ago
    Yes, a plist is defined as containing things of very specific types. See my SO answer [1] for an overview and an attempt at a Swift implementation. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/24051062/20371 http://stackoverflow.com/a/24051062/20371

Dear Lord in heaven, who can possibly prefer the XML version? That's hideous!

by wtbob 12y ago

Dear Lord in heaven, who can possibly prefer the XML version? That's hideous!

XML parsers prefer the XML version. :) Less glibly, humans never have to deal with it. Data is serialized and deserialized, typically in binary format. It exports to XML merely as a convenience. And critically, XML can be typed properly for all ObjC/Cocoa types (sometimes with characteristic XML awkwardness). That XML is wrongly typed, due to the ambiguous source input. JSON would have similar problems. Correct beats pretty, in this case.

FranOntanaya 12y ago
> Less glibly, humans never have to deal with it As long as it works, unless we categorize programmers debugging XML issues as non-human drones.
- Alphasite_ 12y ago
  And that's why we have list editor.
- Alphasite_ 12y ago
  And that's why we have plist editor.
wtbob 12y ago
> XML parsers prefer the XML version. Well yeah, but an XML parser would also have no problem with '<tag name="p"><chardata><char>T</char><char>h</char><char>i</char><char>s</char><whitespace type="space" /><char>i</char><char>s</char><whitespace type="space" /><char>i</char><char>n</char><char>a</char><char>n</char><char>e</char><punctuation type="full-stop" display-char="." /></tag>', but that would be completely insane. > Less glibly, humans never have to deal with it. […] It exports to XML merely as a convenience. For…humans, no? > And critically, XML can be typed It looks like the plist supported types too, although I don't know for certain. At least, the numbers weren't quoted in the plist. > JSON would have similar problems. Would it? '"2" !== 2', IIRC. Of course, my preferred syntax would be: (dict (david great) (array (1 2 3 4))) if one wanted to treat numbers as text and: (dict (david great) (array ([int]1 [int]2 [int]3 [int]4))) if one wanted to indicate that they are ASCII decimal-encoded integers or: (dict (david great) (array ([bin-int]|AQ==| [bin-int]|Ag==| [bin-int]|AW==| [bin-int]|BA==|))) if one wished to use binary encoding using network-transfer order, but I am clearly insane. Not nearly as insane as whoever came up with that XML abomination, though.
- yawaramin 12y ago
  Yes, a plist is defined as containing things of very specific types. See my SO answer [1] for an overview and an attempt at a Swift implementation. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/24051062/20371 http://stackoverflow.com/a/24051062/20371