RE: XML was RE: [GD-General] RE: A portable preferences library

[Greg S. [work] <gr...@st...>]

What I like about XML is that it is an easy to read, easy to edit, and
object oriented (depending on how you use it, of course).  People are
familiar with it, it's very extensible and can be used on a number of
completely unrelated game systems, and there are 3rd party tools/api's =
if
you don't want to roll your own parser.

As a more practical example, I'm planning on re-writing a piece of code =
to
use XML.  Currently we have files which artists create using a tool =
which
describes animations, models, special effects, etc for a "character" in =
our
game.  These files are saved as binary files, and are added to version
control.  I think you can see where I'm going with this - too often =
artist X
got confused and checked in very old versions of these files.  Because =
they
were binary, doing diffs and such was next to impossible.  It'd be nice =
to
see that artist Y added this particle system to the character and that's =
why
our frame rate is plummeting.

Obviously any text file format would do the trick here, but since we =
have a
working XML system, and it's "object oriented", it's pretty easy to do.  =
End
result is a new file format that's easy to read and edit, in code or by
hand.

I'm not saying XML is the end all be all of text file formats, but it =
sure
makes sense if you've got it working.  Oh, and if you view XML files in =
IE
they are color coded and you can expand/collapse the tags!!! w00t. =3D)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gam...@li...
> [mailto:gam...@li...] On Behalf Of
> Brian Hook
> Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 11:14 PM
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: [gamedevlist] XML was RE: [GD-General] RE: A portable =
preferences
> library
>=20
> This list server is getting more and more flakey...anyway, this is a
> repost since my prior one evidently went into the great void..
>=20
> > Behalf Of Jeff Laing
> > I'm surprised that no-one has said "use XML format please" - its
> > not that painful, given that you'll have a fairly limited schema
> > to implement.
>=20
> So here's a question -- I know that whenever a discussion about text
> file formats comes up there is often a "use XML" grenade tossed into
> it.  Now, I can think of a lot of reasons NOT to use XML (i.e. it's
> overkill, for one), but I'm curious what real, tangible reasons for
> using XML exist, as opposed to a simple application specific structure
> (like INI files).
>=20
> Brian
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
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