[darcs-users] XML Format (was: More thoughts on line endings, meta tags, patch types, etc)

[Max Battcher]

I'm new here, but one of the things that drew me to darcs was that I've 
been thinking about Wikis for some time now.  I've been building a 
Wiki-like concept in my head for some time and the more I thought about 
it the bigger it got.  The big thing I realized was that I switched from 
viewing the concept as a store of XML files and started seeing it more 
as a store of changes to virtual XML files (well, actually a single 
large virtual XML data tree).  So one day after brainstorming on my 
concept I was intriqued to discover darcs which contained a lot that I 
had been thinking about and some I hadn't yet gotten to thinking about.

So, having the post below be the first show up in my inbox after joining 
the newsletter is also an interesting coincidence, because I've been 
spending most of my time thus far thinking in terms of XML format 
changesets.

I think I read somewhere that someone was working on XML patches, and 
I'd be interested in seeing where the person was in the effort, and if 
some of their thoughts matched my own on the subject.

Michael Conrad wrote:
> So I've been playing with ideas to have my earlier meta-data tag idea fix
> the recurring line endings problem.  However, I think I'm going to give up
> on this idea.
> 
> First of all, the idea of having a script convert undesirable line endings
> generated by darcs before the user sees them, and then converting back
> before darcs sees them is just infeasible.  (*1)
> 
> Even if darcs handles the line endings with a special option, it would be
> nearly impossible to commute accross the patch that changed the type of the
> file.  (*2)
> 
> I got thinking, this is a lot like the compatibility problem between binary
> and text: the two file types require a different processing, and thus it
> isn't feasible to convert between them.  If someone wants to change the
> type, they basically have to remove the file and add as the new type.
> 
> So, from this line of thought, if we wanted to have the ability to do
> logical lines it would really require a new patch-type (as David already
> said, I believe - I can be stubborn sometimes, sorry)
> 
[snip]

-- 
--Max Battcher--
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