Re: [Rails-devel] Re: XML data files

[Brett L. <wak...@ea...>]

>
>Players can always cheat and edit a save file, making it a little less
>easy doesn't stop them doing (search for 'security through (or by)
>obscurity' for more information).

I agree.  Cheating isn't really a concern of mine unless Rails ends up=
 being looked at for tournament play.

If we get to that stage, I think we can revisit the cheating issue. Until=
 then, I don't really care if someone can 
modify the save file to their advantage. The only person they cheat is=
 themselves.

Additionally, in another Java app, PCGen, just last night I was able to fix=
 a bug in a data set on my own simply because the data format is=
 human-readable. In the early stages of development, the more we can=
 facilitate bug discovery, the better.


>
>You need a human readable format because it makes testing much easier, and
>bug hunting later much easier. It is also much, much easier to provide
>backward compatibility. Look at the problems Peter Nowak is reporting
>getting the new version of the Vassal/18xx to read his old saves. Java
>serialisation is great for live system-system communications, it is very
>fragile as a persistence mechanism because when you change the class
>signature, you find that you cannot load old saves. If your upgrade adds a
>new attribute, either your new XML reading code can cope with the absence
>from an old save, or you can easily provide a migration script for old
>saves. Let's not even get into byte-ordering issues different hardware
>classes.
>
>Basically, 'It's too much like hard work to do human readable saves' is
>lazy, and will land in a deep hole later, it's also just not true with XML
>as good libraries are freely available to do the hard work.
>
>It also means that someone else can much more easily write a tool that
>will work with your save files: e.g. someone might want to take a game
>log, and produce an animation of the map development. If your log is in a
>well-known, easy to read format, they'll just get on with it, and suddenly
>your project has more features. Keep it friendly for other people to work
>with you, and you'll get more friends working with you.
>


All good points. In my opinion, speed of development is an important issue,=
 but so is long-term 
managability. I think XML is widely accepted enough that we won't have too=
 much of a 
problem finding tools to work with it.


---Brett