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Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:49:31 +0100
From: Gabriel Paubert <paubert AT iram DOT es>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: [geda-user] Using Lua to safely read configuration and layout
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On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 12:21:29AM +0100, Roland Lutz wrote:
> You don't gain anything by formatting the data differently.
> 
> No matter if the file format looks like XML, Lua, or plain numbers,
> you have to parse it to do anything useful with it, and you have to
> put it into a context to do most interesting things.  Whether you do
> the former using a XML/Lua library or a mostly trivial parser
> doesn't make much of a difference.
> 
> The one benefit from the current format is that it can easily be
> processed by almost any tool; the drawback being that editing it by
> hand requires a reference in another window.  The only thing which
> can be achieved by changing the data formatting other than
> optimizing for different user preferences is reducing the need for
> this reference, probably at the cost of degrading parseability.
> 

Actually, the PCB format became much more readable after the binary
flags were replaced by readable strings. If there is one defect in the
gEDA format, it is the large number of single digit numeric data in an 
arbitrary order on some lines.

    Gabriel