Re: ircd.conf considerations / XML

[Andre Koopal <andre@xxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> The configuration file of the IRC server is starting to get more and
> more complicated and there are trouble trying to add new fields and
> lines. As of now the format still works and probably will for a long
> time so this might not even be an issue. Also this might not be the
> way to deal with the problems - if that is the case then I guess the
> thread will die quickly by itself.

Yes, agreed. New features has to be hacked into the present line-format
and things don't become more readable that way.
> 
> This is an attempt to create a new configuration file for the IRC server
> using XML. First a simple example of a configuranfile will be shown to
> give a first hint on what it finaly might look like. Then all the valid
> tags are shown to give a more accurate view on what could be done. Then
> finally is an incomplete attempt to create a dtd file for it. Unfortunately
> I'm no wizard at writing these so I'm sure there are plenty of errors in
> there.

I understand XML is a kind of standard parser, so that makes it attractive
to use it.

But having seen it, I can't say I really like this format a lot, partly
because (for me) it is yet another language to learn. And besides, I
don't like HTML either :-)

IMHO this format has a lot of syntactic (sp?) sugar with don't really make
the config more readable, but do make it more bulky.

A format I would personaly prefer is the format which is used by bind 8.
It is C-like, and has the same possibilities as this format.

I don't know however if there are standard parsers for it, and if it is
easy to write a preprocessor.
> 
> Sincerely,
>   Magnus Tjernstrom
> 
Just my 2 euro-cents,

Andre