What YAML engine do you use?

[Steve Holden]

Bengt Richter wrote:

> On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:04:10 -0600, "A.M. Kuchling" <amk at amk.ca> wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:30:47 +0100, 
>>	rm <rm at rm.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Nowadays, people are trying to create binary XML, XML databases, 
>>>graphics in XML (btw, I'm quite impressed by SVG), you have XSLT, you 
>>>have XSL-FO, ... .
>>
>>Which is an argument in favor of XML -- it's where the activity is, so it's
>>quite likely you'll encounter the need to know XML. Few projects use YAML,
>>so the chance of having to know its syntactic details is small.  
>>
> 
> <rant>
> I thought XML was a good idea, but IMO requiring quotes around
> even integer attribute values was an unfortunate decision. I don't buy
> their rationale of keeping parsing simple -- as if extracting a string
> with no embedded space from between an equal sign and terminating white
> space were that much harder than extracting the same delimited by double quotes.

It isn't that much harder, but if there are two ways to do the same 
thing then effectively one of them has to become a special case, thereby 
complicating the code that has to handle it (in this case the parser).

"There should be one (and preferably only one) ..." should be a familiar 
mantra around here :-)

> The result is cluttering SVG with needless cruft around numerical graphics parameters.
> </rant>
> 
It seems to me the misunderstanding here is that XML was ever intended 
to be generated directly by typing in a text editor. It was rather 
intended (unless I'm mistaken) as a process-to-process data interchange 
metalanguage that would be *human_readable*.

Tools that *create* XML are perfectly at liberty not to require quotes 
around integer values.

> OTOH, I think the HTML XML spec is very readable, and nicely designed.
> At least the version 1.0 spec I snagged from W3C a long time ago.
> .... I see the third edition at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ is differently styled,
> (I guess new style sheets) but still pretty readable (glancing at it now).
> 
> Regards,
> Bengt Richter

regards
  Steve
-- 
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