Re: [Pythoncard-users] newbie, tool to print resource structure

[Andy T. <an...@ha...>]

Schollnick, Benjamin wrote:
>>Back in the 90's my company made a commercial Motif 
>>GUI-Builder. From that experience I concur that being able to 
>>manually edit the resource file is a necessity, even though 
>>it may be seldom used.
> 
> 
> A slight clarification...
> 
> I am not saying that you can't edit the resource file manually...
> 
> I am suggesting that the Resourceeditor is the only guaranteed method to
> produce a resource file.
> 
> The resource editor can't make typos, make white space errors, make
> syntax errors, or any of a 100s of human errors...
> 
> While the manually edited file should be okay, it's a valid concern that
> someone might manually edit the file and goof something up.  Then demand
> that Kevin "fix" the problem....
> 
> **** I have been in that situation before.  ****
> 
> I feel that it's important to at least acknowledge that manually editing
> the file may not always be possible, nor supported....
> 
> What if Kevin moves to a XML based format?  Sure it's plain ascii, but I
> personally don't feel that manually editing the tag data is worth it...
> 
> 
> Or heaven forbid a binary format....  
> 
> 		- Ben
> 

Your points are all valid, but you *can* manually edit the resource file 
and it will always be perfectly acceptable to do so. This being an open 
source project no one has to provide support if they don't want to, 
people can 'demand' all they like. I think I can guarantee that if 
someone has a problem and posts an invalid resource file to the list it 
will be spotted very quickly.

The whole point of PythonCard is to make the simple things easy but not 
to stop people working in the fashion they choose. And if they choose to 
edit their own resource files then we shouldn't in any way stop them. As 
far as I'm concerned manually editing the resource file is *always* 
going to be, if not supported, certainly allowed.

The project isn't likely to move to any other resource format, take a 
look at the mailing list archives from 2001 and 2002 where this 
discussion last took place. No one was keen on XML (or any other) 
resource file formats then and I don't see any evidence that this has 
changed in the mean time.

The only XML type thing that may happen (and don't hold your breath) is 
that someone may write a converter which turns your resource file into a 
wxPython .xrc file, but that's a different conversation and I'll leave 
it there.

Regards,
Andy
-- 
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