Re: [Yaml-core] Proposal concerning basic scalar presentation and representation.

[Clark C. E. <cc...@cl...>]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 12:58:42PM -0400, trans.  (T. Onoma) wrote:
| > If one changes the style, and it
| > _could_ cause the application to change its behavior, you are
| > effectively forbidden from doing all of these nice presentation level
| > things. 
| 
| Default behavior would be the same --it would not prevent PP. Only if the 
| application explicitly requested transformations based on style would 
| anything change. In such applications PP wouldn't be useful anyway.
| Pretty is relative to the task. Forcing an app to use tags on common 
| scalars, or worse using "creative" implicits, isn't pretty. 

If an application _can_ change the type based on formatting information,
then all bets of a generic pretty printer are off.  This is the case
that XML has.  You can't indent tags, for instance, unless you really
know that the application does not use whitespace in a signficiant way.

| I certainly don't mind a strong recommendation in the spec for steering
| clear of using style in transformations. Believe me, I am not 
| unsympathetic to your concerns. But forcing my application into 
| "creative" tricks when such functionality is needed, is not helpful. 
| Besides it makes round-tripping much more elegant.

If your application is an 'Editor' where style like this matters,
the Specfication places no such limits on you.  You are using
the Presentation Model.

| > Perhaps Sean is right -- consistency is more important than having
| > people be able to use a ill-defined implicit-typing mechanism.  At the
| > low-levels of YAML, things should just be scalars, mappings, and
| > sequences.  Let the application impose its own implict typing at a
| > higher level.
| 
| The effect of this is to necessitate the use of a schema --be it
| purely in app code or otherwise, severely damaging YAML's usefullness 
| as simple config files.

If you have implicit typing at _any_ level you need a schema.

Best,

Clark

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Clark C. Evans                      Prometheus Research, LLC.
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