From: Bob Hutchison <hutch@...>
Date: 2002-05-16T06:02:32+09:00
Subject: Re: ANN: REXML 2.3.3

On 5/15/02 4:28 PM, "Tobias Reif" <tobiasreif@pinkjuice.com> wrote:

> Bob Hutchison schrieb:
> 
>> Either
>> 
>> <a
>>> <b
>>> <c>C</c
>>> </b
>>> </a
> 
> This doesn't look pretty to me :)

I don't completely disagree with you, however, it does look much more
reasonable with real element names.

<person
   ><name>Joe</name
   ><address
      ><street>123 Main St.</street
   ></address
></person> 

> 
> I think while it's important to find a good way that most people like
> (as default), there could be flags for options for unusual ideas of
> pretty.

Well, here's a question: are you willing to give up the ability to use the
pretty printer as a persistence mechanism?

Here's another: why does someone want a pretty printer anyway? They want to
look at the XML in a readable format, obviously. Why would anyone be happy
with an approximation? I wouldn't want to be debugging a problem with an XML
file that the printed version hid or even 'fixed'. Nor would I want to debug
a problem caused by someone trying to use the pretty printed version in an
application.

If people are willing to give up on an accurate rendering, then why bother
with an XML format anyway? Why not use one of the more concise forms that
are available or devisable? Say:

person
   name 'Joe'
   address
      street '123 Main St.

as a crude example (and not useful except perhaps with SML)

> 
> Tobi